Meta tags are an integral part of SEO and help search engines understand the content of your website. They provide valuable information to search engines, such as the title, description, and keywords of a page, which ultimately affects how your website ranks in search results.
If you want to optimize your WordPress website for search engines, to add meta tag to WordPress is a crucial step. In this article, we will guide you through the benefits, process of adding meta tags to your WordPress website, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your pages.
Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned website owner, this comprehensive guide on meta tags will ensure that your website is SEO-friendly and ready to rank higher in search results. But before moving to details you must basic understanding what are meta tags and how you could get benefitted by adding them in your WordPress website.
What Are Meta Tags?
Meta tags are pieces of HTML code that provide information about a webpage to search engines and other web services. They help search engines understand the content and context of a page, which in turn can affect how the page is ranked and displayed in search results.
Optimizing website with meta tags allow search engine’s bots to understand website content and context in depth. As a result, it can affect your website’s visibility and rankings in the search engine result pages.
Why are the Meta Tags Necessary?
Meta tags are the first impression of a web page to internet users. Well-optimized meta titles and meta descriptions can increase the click-through rate of your website, as they can be used to hook the readers and generate curiosity in the internet user’s mind.
The meta tags play an important role in the on-page SEO of your WordPress website. It can substantially increase search engine rankings and visibility of your website depending on the way you optimize the meta tags.
What are the Three Main Parts of Meta Tags?
Before you add meta tag to WordPress and build the SEO structure of your website, you have to use the three main parts of the meta tags. Those three parts of meta tags are the title, description, and keywords. All these three parts are essential as they make it easy to create a meta tag. Let’s take look at all those three parts of a meta tag.
1. Title Tag
As the name suggests, the title tag shows up in the Google search results as the title of your web pages. It is an important element as it acts as anchor text for the web page appearing in the Google search results.
Whenever someone shares a web page on social media the title tag acts as the main title that is shown to the users. A well-optimized title tag can increase the click-through rate of a web page hence, it is a must to curate it in the best possible way.
While creating a meta title, make sure to keep it attention-grabbing so, more internet users can get curious about it and eventually end up visiting the web page to check out its content.
2. Meta Descriptions
A meta description is a summary of your content that is placed just below the title tag in the Google search results. Meta descriptions allow Google to understand whether your web page is worthy enough to place into its snippet section.
Earlier meta descriptions were shown up to 150 characters in the Google search results but after the new algorithm update, it can be shown up to 300 characters. So, now you can more effectively summarize your website’s content through meta descriptions.
While curating a meta description for your web page, try to make it simple and short. So, Google can easily understand the content of that particular web page. Meta descriptions are like a pitch to the internet users on what you offer, and how they will benefit by visiting the web page. Hence, always make sure to add an effective meta description for your website to attract internet users.
3. Keywords
As we all know, keywords assist the website to increase its visibility and rank higher in the Google search result pages. In the meta keyword tag, you can include all the well-performing relevant keywords based on your industry.
If executed well by following effective keyword strategies, you will get to see improved visibility and rankings of your website in the Google search result pages. Hence, make sure to utilize the meta keyword tags properly.
How Do I Add Meta Tag to WordPress?
We are now heading to know how we can add meta tags in WordPress. So, there are multiple methods through which you can add meta tags to your website. Here in this blog, we are bringing two significant methods: using the Yoast SEO plugin and the manual process.
Method 1: Adding Meta Tags in WordPress Using Yoast SEO Plugin
Our first method is to add meta tag to WordPress using the Yoast SEO plugin. The Yoast SEO plugin is one of the most popular tools excelling in SEO. With this, one can easily manage the metadata without much effort. So, let's start with the process.
- To add the Yoast SEO plugin, you need to visit the WordPress dashboard, and under the Plugins tab, tap Add New.
- The next page is the WordPress repository page, where you can find any plugin. Simply search for the Yoast SEO plugin and tap the Install and Activate button.
- Once activated, the plugin will appear under the WordPress dashboard area. From there, you can optimize and configure the meta tags easily.
- It even allows configuring meta tags for individual posts. For this, you need to visit any post and scroll down to the Yoast SEO section.
- Here, you can simply add the focus keyphrase, title tag, and meta description. Also, the plugin will show the live results of how it will appear on search engine results.
While you have written the data, the plugin will now suggest how you can make this data Google-friendly. This is the only job that the Yoast SEO plugin turns out to be efficient enough to optimize the metadata for search engines. You must follow its suggestions to keep your place on search engines.
Method 2: Adding Meta Tag to WordPress Manually
This is the second method you can choose to add meta tag to WordPress using the manual process. So, let's get there to start the manual process:
- You need to first visit the WordPress dashboard and then the Appearance tab. Under the Appearance tab, hit the theme editor and find the header.php file.
- After accessing the header.php file, you can now insert the meta tags to the <head> section of the HTML code.
- While adding meta tags, make sure you are using the correct syntax for each meta tag as follows:
- You must use <title> for the title tag.
- For the meta description tag, use <meta name="description “content">your” description.
- For the keyword meta tags, you must use <meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3”>.
- After this, you need to save all the changes in the file.
If you want to display meta tags on certain pages or posts, you can use conditional tags for this. This easily helps each page or post that has used conditional tags to be easily targeted on search engines.
How Do I Optimize Meta Tags in WordPress?
You have learned how you can add meta tag to WordPress website; now it's time to know how to make them work. And here are some of the best tricks you can optimize them for search engines.
1. Make Compelling Title Tags
Title tags seem to be one of the vital assets for search engines that help users and search engines know about your page. These are clickable entities that make users engage on your website by simply tapping on it. The title tags should be compelling and accurate and truly resemble what is on your page. It should be made of 50–60 characters, as it seems easier to show them in the search engine results.
2. Make Descriptions Effective
Meta descriptions are shown under the meta title, which shows a quick overview of what’s hidden on your page. However, these are not counted under the ranking factors but surely engage users to click on your page.
So, it is highly advised that you write meta descriptions that easily engage users to visit your page. Also, maintain the character limit of 150-160 and incorporate the primary keyword.
3. Avoid Generic Keyword Meta Tags
You should avoid using generic keyword meta tags and keep it qualitative and rich. Earlier, these were used to include pages that had irrelevant keywords to disguise search engines. Eventually, search engines banned this due to abuse.
A more efficient approach is to utilize a dedicated a premium WordPress themes like those offered by VW Themes. These themes boast stunning layouts and powerful functionalities, including built-in SEO tools that simplify meta tag management. By taking advantage of these resources, you can effortlessly optimize your website’s meta tags and enhance your chances of ranking higher in search engine results.
Troubleshooting Common Meta Tag Issues in WordPress
You have made the metadata perfect on your own; still, there can be troubleshooting issues on your WordPress website. Let’s dig out more about them and their quick fixes:
1. Check Your Website’s Source Code for Meta Tags
There can be issues with the meta tags that might be caused by the website’s source code. So, you need to cross-check the website’s source code by tapping the right side of the web page and selecting View source code. This will show your HTML source code file. Here, you need to check the <head> tag and check if the meta tags are placed well. In case of any errors, you can solve them right there.
2. Resolve Duplicate Meta Tag Issues
You must add multiple plugins or theme settings just to make your website more functional. Conversely, it can cause the issue of creating duplicates. What happens next is that your website’s search engine rankings are affected. To make this right, you need to deactivate or remove the conflicting plugins and theme settings from your site.
3. Ensure Proper Meta Tag Implementation
You must ensure that you add meta tag to WordPress properly with the right syntax. This is a vital step to ensure effectiveness on your website. After placing the meta tags on your site, keep a regular check that they are placed well for each page. Also, you should monitor the progress and performance, ensuring a good SEO strategy.
Additional Tools and Plugins to Enhance WordPress Meta Tags
Apart from Yoast SEO and its supremacy in gearing better SEO standards for your site, there are more tools to help with.
1. Google Tag Manager
The Google Tag Manager is a handy tool that makes meta tag management much easier than you thought. Its work is to simplify the process of maintaining the meta tags and scripts simply without jumping to the code files. It even contributes well when it comes to managing analytics on your site.
2. Third-party Meta Tag Plugins
You can go with the Yoast SEO plugin for a perfect tool to manage SEO rankings. But many more tools excel in their place in terms of SEO. Those are rank math SEO, an all-in-one SEO pack, SEO Framework, and more to count.
3. Social Media Tags
Keeping track of the meta tags on your site is essential, but you need to take care of the social media tags too. These are the tags `which determine how your pages will be shown when they are shared on the social media platforms. And there are tags such as Open Graph and Twitter tags that tell about the social media tags. You can use the Yoast SEO plugin specialising in managing social media tags too.
Conclusion
In conclusion, when you add meta tag to WordPress website, it greatly improve its SEO and help search engines understand the content of your pages. With the use of plugins such as Yoast SEO or All in One SEO Pack, the process of adding meta tags becomes simple and straightforward.
Furthermore, the ability to customize title tags and meta descriptions can increase the click-through rate from search results and ultimately drive more traffic to your site.
Remember to keep your tags concise, relevant and include keywords to achieve the best results. Implementing meta tags may require a little effort upfront, but the long-term benefits make it a worthwhile investment for the success of your website.
To streamline this process, consider leveraging a powerful WP theme bundle that offers premium themes with built-in SEO features. By combining effective meta tag optimization with a visually stunning and functional WordPress theme, you can create a website that not only ranks well but also captivates your audience.
FAQ’s
What are Other Popular Plugins to Add Meta Tags in WordPress?
Other popular WordPress plugins that can help to add meta tags are The SO Framework, RankMath, EasyMetaTags, WPMetaSEO, MetaTagManager.
Does Meta Tags Help to Improve SEO and Search Engine Ranking?
Meta tags can play a role in improving SEO and search engine ranking. However, they are just one of many factors that contribute to a website's ranking.
Meta tags, such as title and description tags, provide information about web page content and help search engines understand context of the page. Properly optimized Meta tags help searchers to understand what information he will get after clicking the link. Relevant description can help you to improve click through rate. However, other factors such as content quality, backlinks, and website architecture also play a significant role in a website's ranking.
How Many Meta Tags You Should Use?
It is recommended to use a maximum of 10 meta tags in a WordPress website. It is important to use website content's relevant meta tags, as it can help improve website's SEO and user experience.
What are Common Meta Tags of WordPress Website?
Some of the commonly used meta tags are title tag, description tag, keywords tag, robots tag, author tag, viewport tag. There are also social media meta tags such as Twitter cards, Open Graph, and schema.org markup.
Do You Need to Put Meta Tags on Every Page of WordPress Website?
It is recommended to add meta tag to WordPress to every page for better SEO. This includes the title tag and description tag, which provide content information and help search engines to search query relevance.
Additionally, it is also important to include other meta tags, such as the Open Graph tags. These which determine how the page will be displayed when shared on social media platforms.
Difference Between Meta Data and Meta Tags?
Meta data refers to the information about a specific content piece such as a blog post, page or image. This information includes the title, author, date published, categories, and other descriptive information.
Meta tags, on the other hand, are HTML tags that provide information to search engines about the content of a specific page. This information includes the page title, description, and keywords.
