Meta tags are a great way for Webmasters to provide search engines with information about their sites. (They) can be used to provide information to all sorts of clients, and each system processes only the meta tags they understand and ignores the rest. (They)\u00a0are added to the\u00a0<\/em><head><\/em>\u00a0section of your HTML page.<\/em><\/p>\n Ranking high in Google in 2016 has far more to do with relevance and reputation of high-quality content, user satisfaction and popularity than meta tag optimisation.<\/p>\n In my experience, Meta tags do not noticeably influence where a page ranks in Google, in a positive way.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Some search engines once looked to hidden HTML tags like these to help order pages in search engine results pages, but most search engines (in 2016) have evolved past this, and Google certainly has.<\/p>\n Google is on record as saying it does not use some data in meta when ranking a page (in a positive way) and tests throughout the years have certainly seemed to confirm this.<\/p>\n Meta Data can help describe any page in a more convenient machine readable format, more suited to search engines, but they are very likely to get spammed, and so ultimately limited on their own, when it comes to ranking documents on the web.<\/p>\n Google may use metadata, amongst many other signals, to\u00a0CLASSIFY<\/strong>\u00a0pages, or DISPLAY<\/strong>\u00a0information about a page in SERPs, although, in natural results in the UK, I see its impact, where it can be\u00a0detected, when used at all, being used mainly for DISPLAY purposes.<\/p>\n Sometimes, yes, at least in the case of the Meta Description, but not always, and this is dependent on many factors. Google will pick its own preferred search snippet for SERPs for display purposes, based on elements that can still be influenced by whoever made the page (and site) \u2013 and what Google\u00a0knows<\/em>\u00a0about the page.<\/p>\n It is possible, but to get, for instance, the meta description to display for a keyword, you generally need the keyword phrase in the meta description. If the reason the keyword is in the meta\u00a0description is because it is a duplicate of the title, then, according to Google\u2019s recommendations \u2013 that\u2019s not ideal \u2013 perhaps even unnecessary duplication.<\/p>\n You can still be creative when thinking about some tags like the Meta Description, but meta tags are best used when EXACTLY describing the page in question, and helping Google to short cut to information about your page. If you are helping Google serve, especially informational queries, and helping short-cut to data, Google is your friend, and most can still benefit from that relationship.<\/p>\n For the purposes of this \u2018beginners<\/em>\u00a0guide to meta tags\u2019, I focus on the three meta I am asked about the most:<\/p>\n The\u00a0meta description tag\u00a0is still important from both from a human and search engine perspective, if used intelligently and properly.<\/p>\n Yes. Google is usually able to extract a relevant snippet from the page which you can then go back and optimise for click-through rates if you think of a better message you want to display in SERPs for that page.<\/p>\n Googles says you\u00a0can<\/strong>\u00a0programmatically auto-generate unique meta descriptions based on the content of the page.<\/p>\n While search engines have much better ways of classifying spam in 2016, it\u2019s still worth remembering search engines are always on the lookout for manipulation that goes to far.\u00a0Bing has publicly stated they look to meta data for signs of manipulation<\/strong>, so you should realise there is probably a degree of risk attached to optimising meta data.<\/p>\n A good meta description may be another sign of a quality page, and that can only be a good thing in 2016.<\/p>\n This is a typical question I was often asked, and as I always liked to back up my recommendations with at least some individual observations to back it up, I often tested to see if I could get a definitive answer to this.<\/p>\n A lot of people use gibberish words in tests so I didn\u2019t. I always used\u00a0unique numbers<\/strong>\u00a0which only appear in hidden elements \u2013 and I have a lot of pages all over the place. I am only interested in what I can see and what actually helps a page rank in SERPs.<\/p>\n Google has said for years\u00a0\u201ccreate unique meta descriptions\u201d. If you\u00a0follow that advice to the letter \u2013 you also conveniently give somebody else free text for their spam site. A good unique meta\u00a0description only increases click through rate if the page actually appears at all for the query.<\/p>\n HOWEVER. You never get the benefit from\u00a0a unique meta description that ONLY appears in your meta description and is not duplicated somewhere else on your page<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What Are Meta Tags? Meta tags are a great way for Webmasters to provide search engines with information about their sites. (They) can be used to provide information to all sorts of clients, and each system processes only the meta tags they understand and ignores the rest. (They)\u00a0are added to the\u00a0<head>\u00a0section of your HTML page. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19,13,17,31,18],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":431,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions\/431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Do Meta Tags Help SEO?<\/h4>\n
Does Google Use What Is In Meta Tags For Ranking Pages?<\/h4>\n
What Do Meta Tags Do in SEO?<\/h4>\n
Do Meta Tags control my search snippet listing in Google?<\/h4>\n
Can I force My Meta Description To Be Used By Google?<\/h4>\n
How To Write Meta Tags<\/h4>\n
What Are The Important Meta tags?<\/h4>\n
\n
Meta Description SEO Best Practices<\/h4>\n
Can Pages Still Rank High Without a Meta Description?<\/h4>\n
What Does Google Say about Meta Descriptions?<\/h4>\n
Can You Control What Message Appears in The Google Search Snippet?<\/h4>\n
Does Every Page Need a Meta Description?<\/h4>\n
Does Google Use The Meta Description When Ranking A Page?<\/h4>\n
Problems with Unique Meta Descriptions<\/h4>\n