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Meta Tag

A meta tag is a tag that provides page information to browsers, search engines, and social platforms in the HTML head area. The main items are meta description, robots, viewport, and Open Graph, and meta keywords are no longer used as ranking signals in major search engines.

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Meta tags are often not directly visible to users, but they are used by browsers, search engines, and social platforms to understand page information. Representative tags include meta description, robots meta tag, viewport, Open Graph, and Twitter Card.

Not all meta tags have the same importance in SEO. There are elements, such as meta keywords, that are currently rarely used in major search engines, and there are elements that can be referenced in search snippets, such as meta descriptions.

Meta tags cannot replace the main text. If you provide a description that is different from the actual content of the page, it may be inconsistent with the user's expectations and may lower trust in the search results display.

Key takeaways

  • Page information is provided in the HTML head area.
  • It can be used for search snippets, indexing control, mobile display, social sharing, etc.
  • The role of each tag and the way it is reflected in search engines are different.
  • Meta information that does not match the text can weaken the quality signal.

References

Frequently asked questions

Should I still use meta keywords?

Google has stopped using meta keywords as a ranking signal since 2009. Bing also said it could be seen as a spam signal. Meta keywords don't require you to spend time writing them.

What is the difference between meta robots tag and robots.txt?

Meta robots control indexing and display of snippets on a page-by-page basis. robots.txt controls crawling access on a domain/path basis. Noindex may not work on pages blocked by robots.txt because meta robots are not crawled.

Related terms