When it comes to optimizing a website for search engines, there are various techniques that can be employed. Two of these techniques are meta tags and structured markup data. Although both of them serve the same purpose of communicating important information about a website to search engines, they differ in their implementation and impact. In this blog post, we’ll explore the difference between meta tags and structured markup data.

Meta tags are pieces of HTML code that are placed in the header section of a webpage. They provide information to search engines about the content of a webpage. Meta tags include a title tag, a description tag, and a keyword tag.

The title tag is the most important meta tag and is used to specify the title of a webpage. This is the text that appears in the search engine results page (SERP) as the clickable link to a webpage. The description tag provides a brief summary of what the webpage is about and appears below the title tag in the SERP. The keyword tag is used to specify the main keywords that are associated with a webpage.

For example, consider a website that sells shoes. The title tag of the homepage could be “Buy the latest shoes online | Shoe Emporium”. The description tag could be “Shop the latest collection of shoes at Shoe Emporium. Free shipping on all orders”. The keyword tag could contain keywords like “shoes”, “footwear”, “online shopping”, etc.

Structured markup data, on the other hand, is a way of providing additional information about a webpage’s content in a structured format that is easily understood by search engines. Structured markup data is implemented using specific formats such as JSON-LD, Microdata, or RDFa.

Structured markup data can be used to provide information about a webpage’s content such as its author, date of publication, rating, price, etc. For example, consider a webpage that provides information about a book. The structured markup data could include information such as the book’s author, title, publication date, genre, and rating.

Here’s an example of structured markup data using JSON-LD:

“`
<script type=”application/ld+json”>
{
“@context”: “http://schema.org”,
“@type”: “Book”,
“name”: “The Catcher in the Rye”,
“author”: {
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “J.D. Salinger”
},
“datePublished”: “1951-07-16”,
“genre”: “Fiction”,
“aggregateRating”: {
“@type”: “AggregateRating”,
“ratingValue”: “4.5”,
“reviewCount”: “100”
}
}
</script>
“`

In this example, the structured markup data provides information about the book’s name, author, publication date, genre, and rating.

In summary, meta tags and structured markup data are two different techniques used to optimize a website for search engines. While meta tags provide basic information about a webpage’s content, structured markup data provides additional information in a structured format that is easily understood by search engines. Implementing both techniques can improve a website’s visibility in search engine results and provide a better user experience for visitors.