Advantages and Disadvantages of Meta tags: including ways to overcome the disadvantages

 

(True Anthem,2021)

Advantages of meta tags -

1. Will attract users to click on your website gaining more organic traffic and engagement. 

(Neilpatel, No date)

2. Can make the purpose of a website clear with the title and description meta tags 

(Semji,2021)

3. Improves the user experience - 

Meta tags not only help crawlers index your website, but they also help to organize your page and present information about your page to your visitors. Users will be able to determine if your page fits their request. Moreover, meta tags help make your content more readable by separating your web page’s text. Making your content clearer means that users will spend more time on your page. Longer sessions are one of the key factors in increasing your search ranking.

(UX For Developers,2019)

4. Helps search engines index your website - 

Meta tags help search engines index your content with the right queries. This is important because it helps your website be shown in the right listings.

If the search engine finds your title and meta description to be relevant to the queries, it will be more likely to rank your website higher.

(SEO Blog by Ahrefs, 2019)

5. Your keywords are ranked  - 

Meta tags will help your site rank for the relevant keywords and rank higher than others in the search results. By inserting the keywords into your meta tags, you help search engines index your page correctly. Although adding meta tags doesn’t directly affect your rankings, it does affect your click-through rate (CTR). This is because people are more likely to click on your website if relevant to their query. This, in turn, will help your rankings because search engines take CTR into consideration.

(neilpatel.com, 2022.)

Disadvantages - 

1. When you use it, you’re telling your competitors exactly what keywords you’re optimizing each page for. Competitors can take those lists that you carefully crafted and optimize their own sites for the same keywords. - To combat this you can create keywords unique to your brand and legally copyright them so it would be illegal to use them.(Andrea Kim, 2023.)

    

(Berry, T. 2021)

 2.Time spent working on meta keyword tags is time taken away from optimizing your site for those keywords, which is more important. To overcome this you can spend less time on the tags and more time on the site.(Andrea Kim, 2023.)

(Matthew Woodward,2021)

3. Sometimes snippets are better at providing exactly what searchers are looking for than page summaries, especially if the page has a lot of content. Instead we can spend more time on a better summary that describes the main points of the website. (Andrea Kim, 2023.)

(Thought C0,2006)

References:

(neilpatel.com. 2022. Meta Tags for SEO: Definition, Examples, & Best Practices. [ONLINE] Available at: https://neilpatel.com/blog/why-meta-tags-are-so-important/. [Accessed 17 January 2023].

(No date) Neilpatel.com. Available at: https://neilpatel.com/blog/5-steps-to-building-a-successful-organic-traffic-pipeline/ (Accessed: January 28, 2023).

Andrea Kim. 2023. What impact do meta and title tags have on the search engine? - GainChanger. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.gainchanger.com/meta-tags-impact-search-engine/. [Accessed 17 January 2023].)

Berry, T. (2021) How to write the competition section of your business plan, Palo Alto Software. Available at: https://articles.bplans.com/how-to-write-the-competition-section-of-your-business-plan/ (Accessed: January 28, 2023).

Gay, L. (2021) The 9 reasons explaining a fall in organic traffic, Semji. Available at: https://semji.com/blog/the-9-reasons-explaining-a-fall-in-organic-traffic/ (Accessed: January 28, 2023).

Gravitt, A. (2021) 7 meta tag mistakes publishers make, True Anthem. Available at: https://www.trueanthem.com/meta-tags-for-seo/ (Accessed: January 28, 2023).

Hardwick, J. and Oh, S. (2019) 10 ways to get Google to index your site (that actually work), SEO Blog by Ahrefs. Available at: https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-index/ (Accessed: January 28, 2023).

Knight, W. (2019) “What is user experience?,” in UX for Developers. Berkeley, CA: Apress, pp. 1–12.

Kyrnin, J. (2006) How to properly use the meta refresh tag, ThoughtCo. Available at: https://www.thoughtco.com/meta-refresh-tag-3469046 (Accessed: January 28, 2023).

Woodward, M. (2022) What are meta keywords and why you shouldn’t use them!, Matthew Woodward. Available at: https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/on-page/meta-keywords/ (Accessed: January 28, 2023).