It is not a secret that having a presence on social media platforms is essential for any business nowadays. The return on investment on this kind of marketing is huge. In fact, if you do not have any additional budget to dedicate to advertising, social media is always the perfect choice. But, to build your presence online, it is not just about creating a profile on Facebook or Twitter and posting all kinds of stuff. You need to understand exactly what needs to be done. One of the more important things you need to figure out is meta tags.
You might have heard this term being thrown around here and there, but do you really know what it means and why is it important? To put it simply, it is another one of those things that can considerably improve your website’s search engine optimization.
However, you can just use any meta tag. It is vital to figure out exactly which ones you should use, how they impact your website and how they influence the customer’s experience.
To bring an understanding of the subject, I decided to write this article and talk about certain social media meta tags and why they are important.
What are they?
Source: techwyse.com
A meta tag is a catchy term, but what exactly does it mean? Is it just another type of hashtag? No. Far from it.
To make it easy to understand, you have to look at it like this. The meta tag is a part of your website. A part of the HTML code that allows search engines to better understand the content that is on your side. They provide Google with the right information to ensure that your website is properly represented on search results.
This makes it easier for customers to understand what your business has to offer and what kind of content they can expect.
It is essential
All of this might seem a little bit complicated to comprehend, but you have to understand that this is a vital part of the website building process. If you want to build your brand recognition and if you expect more visitors on your sites, this is something that you have to do.
Why are they essential? Well, think of it this way. When you search for a certain topic on Google, let’s say search engine optimization, you expect to see topics that are all related to what you are searching for. You will be looking at titles with “search engine optimization” or “SEO”.
To make those kinds of results show up on Google, websites have implemented proper meta tags.
Since this is the exact same way every person uses Google, your website must be properly optimized for SEO, and meta tags are going to help you with that.
Social Media Meta Tags
Source: notfadeawaymarketing.com
Now, once you understand how important all of this is, you will need to figure out exactly which method tags need to be implemented so your content can be properly represented on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and others.
When a link is shared on Facebook (or any other social media site), Facebook automatically pulls information from the linked website and creates a card. On this card, there will be an image, a title, a description, and a URL. This is the information everyone is looking for. Anything else is extra.
The next time a link from your site is shared, you will want that same type of card to come up, right? The most common way to do that is with open graph tags. They are the most commonly used.
For Facebook, Twitter, etc. you will need og:title, og:description, og:image, and og:url. In certain cases, og:type might be needed, but most of the time, it isn’t.
To implement these, you will need to add them to your HTML code.
Here is a suggestion for proper implementation:
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Title of article or webpage” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”A URL to the article/webpage />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Short description of the webpage or an article.” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=” Direct link to the image ”/>
Once you implement these to the HTML code, anytime someone posts a link of your website on any social media platform, a proper card will be created.
If you need more meta tags optimization, you could always check out online guides like the ones that can be found on Kontentino.
Use online tools to test it
Once you have implemented meta tags onto your website’s HTML code, it is time to check if they work. The simplest way to do that is to just try and link a website on all social media platforms.
However, that is going to take an unnecessary amount of time. There is a faster way to check that. Online, you can easily find tons of tools that can check the situation of your meta tags for you. All you have to do is link the website you wanted to test, add the link of your website and that is about it.
In a matter of seconds, you should get several previews. If something does not load, if there are any errors or something like that, you may need to reevaluate your HTML code. You might have made an error. If not, you have successfully implemented the HTML code for social media to your webpage.
There is always more you can do
Source: theopenmic.co
It is very important to understand that these four or five meta tags I mentioned above are some of the most commonly used ones. The ones that are truly essential. However, there are so many options out there that can make your website even better. There are tags made for all kinds of things and even analytics.
As you can see, social media meta tags are quite important in today’s online world. Without them, you might a huge number of your visitors. Implementation of this kind of HTML code will make both your webpage and business more trustworthy and safer for everyone. So, even if it seems a little bit confusing at first, you can use this article as a guide to implementing meta tags.
