Demystifying Meta Tags in 3 Easy Steps

by Paul Mauer February 6, 2016
February 6, 2016

You don’t have to be a digital maverick to have stumbled across the term “meta tags” in today’s marketing lexicon. But whether or not you know the details of what meta tags are, why they work, and how to implement them for your business success is another story.


Read our quick guide to learn the what, why, and how of meta tags, and use them to grow your business success:


What Are Meta-Tags: “Meta tag” is a term used for a snippet of code that utilizes invisible HTML elements. These snippets don’t visibly appear on your website, but search engines are able to read them to provide more context for your web page and ultimately help your site rank better.


To put it simply, meta tags are invisible SEO power-ups tucked into your web page code.


Why Do Meta Tags Work: Meta tags provide Google (or any search engine) with helpful context clues about your web page. Google will “crawl” or scan the words on your website and take a good guess about who you are and what you do – but with meta tags, you’re able to clearly define your content in no uncertain terms.


However, it’s not a silver bullet. Meta tags are only a piece of the puzzle. SEO is a marathon, not a race. Doing all the right things – and keeping up with Google’s algorithms – will slowly shoot you to the top of the list.


Why is being near the top of the Google search results so important, anyway?


The websites that appear near the top of the page garner the vast majority of clicks. Behaviorally, most users only view the first couple links before making a decision to click or to exit.


Check this chart from searchenginewatch to see the full break down.



How Can Meta Tags Grow Your Business: So now that we’ve established the what and the why of meta tags, how do you execute them for your own gain?


If you have your own web page, try this:


Open your webpage in an HTML editor and locate the and tags. You should see the meta tags placed just after the first tag. If you don’t see any, it could mean your site hasn’t been properly optimized.


Here’s a great rundown of the meta tags you’ll want to implement:



  • Title : Test Title
  • Meta description :
  • og:title :
  • og:description :
  • og:url :
  • og: image :
  • favicon :

So Now What? As you can see, taking the mystery out of meta tags isn’t too hard, but if you’re like most small business owners, spending your days on meta tag upkeep is not – and should not – be your #1 focus.

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