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Website Metadata Visibility Tool

Metadata is a collection of HTML attributes that provide rich summaries and informative information about your webpage. Quickly check any existing meta tags on your website and receive preview of what your website looks like online.

A Website Metadata Visibility Tool

Metadata is a collection of HTML attributes that provide rich summaries and informative information about your webpage. Quickly check any existing meta tags on your website and receive a preview of what your website looks like online.

What are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are specific pieces of code that provide information about a webpage. Essentially, meta tags are content descriptors that help search engines understand what a web page is all about.You can best demonstrate the use of meta tags by sharing a link, whether it’s social media, instant messaging or any other software. The preview you see is a direct representation of the meta tags in use on that webpage.The information contained in meta tags is not displayed on the web page itself for everyone to see. The protocol was originally introduced for machines to examine, it’s actually buried in the code at the top of your webpage for search engines and technical services to scan.

Why meta tags are important

Meta tags are a way of adding value to your website when it’s viewed online – in the search results, or on social media. A link to your website is more often the first interaction that you will have with a visitor, and making a good impression matters. If your website looks empty or unmaintained then users will never even consider clicking the link.In short, how much you value your rankings on Google should determine how much you focus on meta tags. Conveniently, one main factor in any digital marketing campaign is the creation of compelling content and striking imagery. This comes in hand in hand as a key part of the metadata you include on your webpage.

Do meta tags help SEO?

Yes – meta tags do help with SEO, but it’s important to know not all meta tags do help and some even have a negative effect on your SEO if used incorrectly.When used correctly, meta tags provide more detail to search engines about your page. Search engines use this information and display it within the search engine results pages (SERP’s) to any website visitors who encounter the page.Meta tags can be optimised to highlight the most important elements of your content, making your website standout in the search results.

Getting started with meta tags

Meta tags represent the very basics of SEO, meta tags are more than just descriptions and keywords, although these are picked out the most. Some meta tags are not as useful as they used to be, whilst others are definitely worth using regularly.There are four main types of meta tags that search engines use to analyse your content, these are:

  • Title tag: Specifies the title of a given webpage, directly displayed in the on the SERP’s as the clickable headline.
  • Title tag: Meta keywords: Keywords that describe the content of the webpage shortly and concisely, generally written in lower case and comma-separated.
  • Title tag: Meta description: A summary of the contents of the webpage for the benefit of both users and search engines.
  • Title tag: Meta robots: A specific tag that lets search engines know what to follow and what not to follow and whether they should be indexed or not.

There are more than just the four meta tags mentioned above. Some are less common or not relevant to web marketing, but we’ve highlighted them all in our cheat sheet, understanding all the different meta tags