The <meta> tags are snippets of HTML code that provide specific information (metadata) to search engines and browsers that is not visible on the web page. They are typically used to specify the page description and control the indexing of a page in search engines.
Additionally, meta tags can set the viewport, create meta-refresh redirects, and even label pages as containing sexually explicit adult content for Google.
The <title> tag is often referred to as the “meta title” by webmasters and SEOs; however, technically, it is not correct.
Here’s an example of meta tags on a web page:
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="description" content="Ahrefs SEO Glossary: 200+ SEO terms explained">
<meta name="robots" content="noarchive">
</head>
It tells the browser that the character encoding for the HTML document is UTF-8, specifies the page description for the search engines, social networks and messengers, and instructs Google not to cache the page.
There are quite a few meta tags specific to different search engines and clients. Here we’ll cover those that are important for SEO and understood by Google.
Meta tags are an important part of SEO and provide information to Google about the contents of a web page, control indexing and crawling, and can change the way a page appears on SERPs.
There are quite a few meta tags, but not all of them are important for SEO. Here are the most important ones that Google understands:
<meta name=“description” content=”…”>
The meta description tag is used for a brief summary of the content of a web page. It provides additional context to search engines, and can be used to create a search snippet on SERP.
<meta name=“robots” content=”…, …”>
The meta robots tag controls search engine crawlers’ behavior and page indexing. By default, search engines will crawl and index any web page, but the robots meta tag can be used to prevent that. The “noindex” directive will prevent a page from being indexed (or remove it from index), and the “nofollow” directive forbids search engine crawlers to follow the links on a page (and pass “link juice” via them).
<meta name=“google” content=”.…”>
Meta Google is a little-known meta tag specific to Google. A couple of useful tags include:
<meta http-equiv=“refresh” content=”…”>
This meta tag is responsible for the so-called meta-refresh redirect (delayed redirect). It specifies the time delay for the redirection, as well as the URL of the page to which the visitor will be redirected.
Meta refresh redirects are not welcome by Google but are still recognized.
<meta name=“rating” content=“adult”>
This tag signals that the page must be filtered by Google’s SafeSearch results.
The short answer is “No” - while this meta tag was used years ago to specify the keywords associated with a web page, it is generally of no use for SEO today. It might even be harmful because Bing says they use it as a spam signal.
Technically, there’s no such thing as a meta title. There is a title tag - HTML element containing a webpage’s title. But many people, even professional SEOs, call it a meta title because it’s located in the <head> section near meta tags.
The title tag appears in the SERP and provides a brief description of the page’s content.