The importance of meta tags for SEO

shammis606 · Post by **shammis606** » Mon Jan 20, 2025 10:52 am

We will review a set of meta tags, grouping them according to their greater or lesser importance for SEO:
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When Google was taking its first steps at the end of the last century and beginning of this one, meta tags were very important for SEO. They were part of the set of extremely relevant variables when it came to achieving a good ranking in the SERPs.

Today they do not enjoy the same privileges. The algorithms of the main search engines do not use them as they used to, that is, to determine what type of content the pages offered. Today, the best SEO positioning strategy is to generate good content strategies .

However, meta tags still serve some important functions. They the benefit of using our student database are checked, for example, by bots from Google, Bing and other search engines in a negative sense: to identify duplicate content. Because of this, it is useful to review how they affect SEO.

We will review a set of meta tags, grouping them according to their greater or lesser importance for SEO:
High importance

Title This
is not a meta tag, but it works as such. Its definition within the page header tells Google what title to display in the results block. If it is not implemented, or does not match the internal content of the page, it will choose a title within the <body> or body of the content. Ideally, this should not happen, as it reduces the effectiveness when it comes to attracting users to click and visit the site. Best practices speak of pixel length, as the number of characters is obsolete - this is a good tool to measure the length of titles and descriptions - and efficient and direct use of language.

Meta description

Like the previous one, its functionality in terms of positioning and ranking is low, but it is very important when it comes to attracting browsers to enter a page, since it is the summary that is shown in the search results.

Meta content-type

Its relevance is related to the correct display of the pages, since it allows defining the type of coding used. If it is not applied, the browser could have problems rendering the code and display the content with errors. Since you want users to have an optimal experience, and because of this, share or link the page, it is very important for SEO that problems of this type do not occur.

Medium importance
Meta robots

Many SEO experts consider this tag to be irrelevant. However, it can be relevant for sites with many pages and little maintenance. It defines a file called “robots.txt” that will tell “the spiders” whether they can crawl the entire site or should exclude some pages or directories. Its implementation will improve the efficiency of the time spent by robots on indexing.

Low importance

Meta keyword

They have little (or no influence nowadays) on ranking and content determination. However, they are useful when a site has an internal search engine, because the engine usually checks the keywords to deliver appropriate results to visitors.

Meta author

It is only useful for aesthetic reasons. When programming and design time is limited, it is better not to worry about defining it. It will only be responsible for defining the name of the author of the content, which is displayed on some search engines and social networks.

Meta expiration and date

As with many elements defined on pages, it is best to control these types of events (the expiration and deletion of a page) through global tools such as sitemaps . Not only does it not help to define them on a unit-by-unit basis, but if not thoroughly controlled, they could cause problems such as a page not being indexed.

They were used to “force” the browser to request a new version of the page, instead of viewing a cached one.
Some robots may “mistake” and not index the page, considering it expired.

Meta rating

This is a label created to define “adult” content, although it is not the most efficient way to label them. It is much better to place them in a different directory and alert Google directly. It should be remembered that a site with images, videos or texts not suitable for minors that are not properly marked will be penalized by most search engines.

The Importance of Meta Tags for SEO: Conclusion
Many tags are left out, but reviewing them all would require too much analysis and, in truth, it is not worth it: the rest are rarely used. The ones reviewed above are enough to have correct SEO practices. Complementing the use of these tags with other good practices, such as an efficient keyword strategy and a solid site architecture, is key to making SEO positioning pay off for your