Meta tags are invisible tags that provide data about your page to search engines and website visitors.
In short, they make it easier for search engines to determine what your content is about, and thus are vital for SEO.
Meta tags are placed in the <head> section of a HTML document, and so they need to be coded in your CMS. This can be easier or harder depending on the platform that powers your website: an “out of the box” solution like WordPress will have a dedicated section for meta tags like canonical links or meta descriptions.
However, before we get into the nitty-gritty of which meta tags to add to your site, let’s talk about why they’re so important.
Why do meta tags matter?
As previously mentioned, meta tags offer more details about your site to search engines and website visitors who encounter your site in the SERP. They can be optimized to highlight the most important elements of your content and make your website stand out in search results.
Search engines increasingly value a good user experience, and that includes making sure that your site satisfies a user’s query as best as it possibly can. Meta tags help with this by making sure that the information searchers need to know about your site is displayed upfront in a concise and useful fashion.
Some types of meta tag relate to page structure and will ensure that your site is easy to navigate, while others tell search engines which parts of your page are important and which to overlook.
There are numerous different types of meta tags which fulfill different roles, and not all of them are relevant to SEO. You can find a full list in