Search engine optimisation (SEO) involves optimising your website to accommodate the search engine algorithms, potentially resulting in higher rankings. And there are many ways you can do so. One way is through your meta tags.
Meta tags are essentially snippets of HTML code that help relay important information about your web page to search engines. For example, meta tags can influence the way your web page is displayed in the search results. And if you want your website to rank higher on search engines, you may want to consider using these advanced meta tags.
1. Rel Canonical (rel=”canonical”)
Use the “canonical” meta tag to tell the search engines which URL is your preferred URL. This is good for user experience and search engine rankings.
For example, if you have multiple URLs that are slightly different from each other, use canonical tags on the variations of pages to indicate which page is the preferred page.
This is done to avoid issues that may appear when search engines try to crawl exactly the same page multiple times.
To use the “canonical” tag, it is generally recommended to include the tag in your page’s <head> section.
For example, if you have the following content in your page’s <head> section:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/example-with-canonical.html” />
This page can be identified by search engines as the preferred version of your page.
2. Robots (<meta name=”robots”>)
Robots tags are used to tell search engines which pages on your site you don’t want them to crawl and index.
This is particularly useful if you are trying to protect sensitive content. It can also be used to help search engines better understand your website.
For example, you can use the robot tag to:
- Prevent search engines from crawling password-protected pages
- Prevent search engines from indexing your sitemap
- Prevent search engines from indexing your XML sitemap
- Prevent search engines from indexing your sitemap index
- Prevent search engines from indexing your sitemap to prevent crawling issues
- Prevent search engines from indexing the robots.txt file
Use robots tags by placing them in your <head> section:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow” />
Keep in mind that search engine rules are subject to change, so you may want to consult the search engine’s documentation for exact specifications and details.
3. Hreflang (rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”)
Hreflang tags are used to specify the language or region of a web page among a website’s international versions.
For example, if you have a website that targets users in the United States, you can use the language code “en” to specify the English version of your site. If users from other regions want to access your website, you can also add hreflang tags with the language or region code for those areas.
To use the hreflang tag, it is usually recommended to include it in your <head> section.
For example, add the following code to your <head> section:
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://www.example.com/” hreflang=”en-us” />
This tells search engines that the English version of your site is available at the following URL: http://www.example.com/.
Final Thoughts
Meta tags are an example of a website feature that may be overlooked. But these elements can help you improve your SEO campaign. This is why it’s important to keep in mind that meta tags should be used in a way, so they complement the content on your page. And they should be consistent with your site’s overall message.
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