What are Meta Robots Tags?
Meta tags are placed in between the <head> code on a page and gives search engines instructions on how to interpret page specific content.
For example:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>
The most common tags are:
- Title Tag - The title of the page
- Meta Description - A brief description of the content on the page
- Meta Robots - Directives for search engines such as follow/nofollow, noindex
It is important to note that a “nofollow” in the <head> section will nofollow all links on that page, whereas the rel=”nofollow” is link specific.
Why Meta Robots Tags are important for SEO
Meta Robots directives provide information about your page and make it easier for search engines to determine what your content is about.
How to check
- Enter your URL into Screaming Frog SEO Spider.
- Under the “Internal” tab, scroll to the right.
- You will see “Meta Robots 1” and “Meta Robots 2”. These two columns will tell you the directives of each page.
Important to note that the lack of directives does not necessarily indicate a problem.