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Is your site optimized with keywords in your meta description? Find out using our free meta tags analyzer tool!
The meta tag analyzer is a simple free SEO tool that lets you check any meta tag data from any site on the web! You can see the meta description and specific meta keywords as well as other data that can be collected.
Meta tags are a necessity for all websites. Search engines use meta tag descriptions to decipher your content and determine your site’s authority on certain keywords. Your home page is one of the most important areas of SEO.
You can check any domain using the meta tag analyzer, whether you want to check your home page or a sub-page. You can check as many sites as you want for free and see all the meta tag descriptions available.
Optimizing your meta description is the first step in improving your SEO. Want to learn more? Here are some tips for creating the best meta tag strategy for your site.
What are Meta Tags?
Most sites today place meta tags in the <head> element of your website. These are coded into your head with keywords. While every keyword strategy is different, the most common bond is that you want to build authority on topics that your visitors will likely search.
Placing these topical keywords in your meta tags will suggest to Google that you are authority and that your content will inform based on these keywords. If your content does not back up what is in your meta description, you may not rank as highly, if at all for those keywords.
There are three important parts to meta tags. These include:
The Title
Description
Keywords
The title or title tags are the most important piece to your SEO marketing strategy. This is the text that first defines your page on SERPs and when Google crawls your website. This is the title that is also shown to potential visitors when they search certain keywords related to what’s on your website or specifically in your meta tags.
The description is also important as it describes your website and offers another place to put important keywords that relate to your domain authority on a certain topic. The key goal is to continue to build that authority through your title tag, description, and keywords.
The meta keyword tag is where you list any keyword that relates back to your site. This is what you want people to be searching when they land on this page, so that everything relates back to their search. Your keywords are important to understanding your overall content and showing Google that you are a domain authority on each keyword you select.
Why are Meta Tags Important for SEO?
When we talk about meta descriptions, we really are referring to the SEO strategy for your site. Meta description are a basic element to optimizing your site for search engines to crawl. Without a poignant meta description, your site will not grab attention in SERPs or Google may not believe that you are an authority based on the meta descriptions and keywords used in the meta tags.
So what do meta tags do for your SEO?
In the most basic terms, meta tags define your site’s content to search engines like Google. When you have a high amount of traffic and lots of backlinks, your meta tags will support an overall strategy to help you rank higher and achieve greater domain authority.
Title tags, keywords, and meta descriptions are just part of an SEO strategy. To understand the big picture, you also want to incorporate other on-page SEO factors and content strategy to get people interested in the content that you publish.
Are Meta Tags Necessary for Your Site?
Some people would argue that SEO is dead, and that it does not matter if you put meta tags on your site. However, as much as Google is constantly trying to break the mold, meta tags still matter to your ranking and how search engines define your website.
Search engines must be able to read your meta tags in order to relate your domain authority to keywords that people are searching on the web. While having the perfect meta tags is not the only part of the strategy, Google weighs your meta tags along with other factors to determine a ranking that will match your site’s content and satisfy the user looking for the same content.
There are other signals such as social shares, reviews, backlinks, and directories that also contribute to the ranking of your site. However, your site’s content and the keyword tags you choose to use will make or break your website’s ranking in Google.
Is There a Formula to Optimize Meta Tags?
If there is one, you should try to discover your own path and do something that includes keywords you want to rank but also is unique for your website. Formulas only work for some content. However, you can look at competitors to see how they are ranking their top pages and what their meta tags look like to gain some insight. You may learn what to do or not to do based on competitor research.
Most of all, your meta tags are a step-by-step code for a search engine to define your content and see how it’s relevant to others searching online. There are some meta tags that are valued more than others.
Here is a run down of what is most important when writing your meta tags. These meta tags should be present on every website.
Meta Content Type - This is necessary for every page on your site and is typically included with your head element code. You must use this in order for your page to render correctly in your browser as it defines the character set for the page.
Title Tags - These are also important to how your site is displayed in SERPs and how Google crawlers view your content. Your title tag is typically visible in SERPs and at the top of the URL bar.
Meta Description - The description goes under the title tag and displays on every SERP as well, thus making it another essential meta tag that you need to include.
Viewport - You have to define a viewport as there are multiple ways to get online through tablets, smartphones, and desktop computers. You jeopardize a good mobile experience by not including the specific viewport type.
Social meta tags - These are important to define so that when your content is shared, the title, description, and images are exactly what you want people to see of your brand from that page. These are also called OpenGraph data elements.
Keywords - These are lesser important, and some would say completely unnecessary. However, there is no reason not to include a couple of keywords that you want to identify in your meta, but you should make sure to support the keywords with your content. That means you probably do not want to include more than a couple of keywords per page.
Are There Bad Meta Tags?
While your site will not be penalized for using the following meta tags, they are just a little bit useless and take up space on your website. You do not want to clog your site down with wasteful code anyway, as that could affect your site’s page speed.
If you do have some of these in your <head> element, you should do a bit of spring cleaning and only define the meta tags that are going to help your SEO matter.
Author/web author - Do you have specific authors for each page on your website? Probably not. The author tag has lost its value since Google stopped listening the author’s profile with every blog in SERPs anyway.
Expiration/date - If you are writing evergreen content, which you should be, then you should never have an expiration tag that denotes when the page will expire.
Rating - Are you publishing a lot of mature content? It would not matter anyway if you use this tag, but this is where you can specify the maturity rating of your site.
Copyright - Some people would argue that copyright is still important, but you can simply place this in the footer of your site instead of adding more code. Why say it twice?
Cache control - You can set this tag if you want to control how often a page is cached in your browser. However, you can simply do this in the HTTP header if it is necessary.
While none of these meta tags will hurt your SEO, it can bog down your website. The best thing that you can do is keep your site clean and lean, but you still want to include those SEO meta tags that provide assistance to rank up in Google and other search engines.
Should You Add OpenGraph and Social Data to Your Meta Tags?
If you are sending a lot of traffic to your website and have social network profiles, then you are likely sharing content from your site to the web through these channels. However, what do followers see when you link your site?
Are they seeing the right title and images that define your brand? This is why OpenGraph is so important. In fact, Facebook was the one to create OpenGraph in 2010. It allowed sites to set up automatic title tags, descriptions, and images that could be instantly previewed and loaded when a link was posted on Facebook.
OpenGraph has now expanded to include Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ platforms. You can also add Wikipedia links, contact links, and even sub-menus for your website to denote important content.
While not all OpenGraph content should be utilized, it is valuable for your followers to be able to share content readily from your website without canceling a post because the image is blurry or does not denote what they are talking about on their page.
These OpenGraph tags are especially important for social conversions. What is better than seeing your content shared the right way and getting thousands of likes?
Many SEO marketers do not include OpenGraph data at first because it does not directly affect your rankings. It is more for social linking performance. However, the more you are linked on social media, the more you are likely to rank up in search engines as well. Social signals are very valuable to domain authority, and as you get more links to your content on different networks, the faster you may rise for certain keywords.
How do you use OpenGraph tags?
og:title
This defines the title that displays underneath the post when you share to social media. It serves as your content’s title and will direct people what to do.
og:url
This sets the canonical URL of the page that will be shared. This is defining the page that all shares should go and is important if you want to make sure to funnel certain visitors into a sell page or landing page experience.
og:description
The description is under the title and offers a little bit more information about the content being shared. This typically displays in smaller text when you share to your timeline from a website.
og:image
This is probably the most important part to your social media marketing strategy. The images that you define for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google will all say something about your website. You can unify your branding through these images and allow your shares to always speak the right message about your company and its products.
Are you looking for help with your SEO content strategy and meta tags? Using our meta tag analyzer is just the first step. We can help you with a variety of different SEO strategies and services.