Understanding Meta Tags

(Rubin, 2018)

In what concerns visiting a website, developers may find certain conflicts regarding access to the different pages of a website. Amid this context, the immensurable amount of data on a web page may lead to smart ways in order to access these elements using meta tags. In simple words, meta tags are used by developers with the purpose of simplifying content that is on a web page. 

Example: 

The figure above shows a collection of HTML lines of code, specifically forms of meta tags. These lines of code allude to the different sections or elements of a web page featured by meta tags.

Types of Meta Tags

Bodard and de Vuyst (2003) define meta tags as parts of hypertext markup language (HTML) source code, that contain keywords used to describe the contents of a web page. This context encompasses a wide range of types of meta tags, which mainly include Title Tags, Meta Description Tags, and Meta Keyword Tags. 

Types of Meta Tags

Title Tags

In an article published by Awati (2022), affirms that title tags tend to add extra information about an HTML element. Its value is displayed as a tooltip when a user moves the cursor over that element.

Example:

<p title="Title"> content = "Welcome to Steam"</p>

In this figure, it is noted the "Welcome to Steam" as a link, in other words, this is a meta tag, and once clicked it redirects to a specific section or page of a website. Title Tags are used to give the internet user an understanding of what is the page about, or simply display a title. 

Meta Description Tags

According to Yasar (2023), a meta tag is a snippet of HTML code located in the header of a webpage, serving the purpose of providing a brief overview of the webpage's content. When engaging in search engine optimization (SEO), it is commonly recommended as a best practice to incorporate meta description tags.

Example: 

<meta name="description" content="Steam is the ultimate destination for plating, discussing, and creating games.">

This image shows the description of a website on the search engine results. In fact, it serves to pass to the user an insight or understanding of what is the website about.

Meta Keyword Tags 

"Meta Keywords are a specific type of meta tag that appear in the HTML code of a Web page and help tell search engines what the topic of the page is. Meta keywords are distinguished from regular keywords because they appear “behind the scenes,” in the source code of your page, rather than on the live, visible page itself" (Wordstream, n.d.). 

This image displays a set of lines of code as referred to in one of the first figures. Meta keyword tags are unique and different from the other types, as they are not visible to the internet user, and they give structure to the content on the web page. 

Importance of Meta Tags

Meta tags can influence the decision of the internet user to whether click or not on the search results. The more eye-catching, relevant and attractive description gets more clicks, consequently, increasing the audience and people that click on that website. In other words, meta tags, allow the developers or website owners to provide relevant results to users, highlighting the content from web pages to users (Birajkumar & Gaharwar, 2018).

Reference(s): 

Yazar, K (2023) TechTarget Available at: What is a Meta Description? A Definition from TechTarget.com (Accessed: 04/09/2023)

de Vuyst, B. & Bodard, K. (2003) ‘Reaching for the site: meta tag litigation and access to Internet-based information’, 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2003. Proceedings of the, System Sciences, 2003. Proceedings of the 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on, Systems sciences [Preprint]. doi:10.1109/HICSS.2003.1174454.

Awati, R (2022) TechTarget Available at: What are attributes in computing? (techtarget.com) (Accessed: 03/09/2023)

International Journal of Scientific Research in Science and Technology IJSRST (2018) Search engine optimization (SEO) using HTML meta-tags, Academia.edu. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/37359662/Search_Engine_Optimization_SEO_using_HTML_Meta_Tags (Accessed: 07 August 2023)

Rubin, C (2018) I remade my portfolio yesterday from scratch and got inspired Available at: Turned on black Android smartphone photo – Free Switzerland Image on Unsplash (Accessed: 04/09/2023)