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Everyone has a question about Meta Tags.
It is time to uncover the truth and clear up matters on the
subject. After reading this article, you'll see why it is
critical to your success to stay on top of search engine
trends and know how they affect you. Keep in mind, this
information is just the tip of the iceberg. I know that
there are a lot of so-called SEO opinions out there, but you
can't afford to fool around with untested SEO methods, it's
just not smart.
Read this article and get the reliable
information on Meta Tags that you need. If you want more,
are ready to make a change, and want that change now, sign
up for one of our
Marketing Newsletters today.
Meta tags are often both incorrectly used
and misunderstood on the Internet today. What are meta tags?
A meta tag is a snippet of code located between the <HEAD>
</HEAD> tags in an HTML document. Translated, "meta" is
short for "meta information". However, not all meta tags are
informational tags.
They were first created to "make sense"
of the growing number of web pages on the Internet in the
mid-90s. But in the late 90s something happened. Unethical
webmasters, most notably, those who ran adult websites,
began abusing the Keyword Meta Tag to drive traffic to their
sites. They would place keywords unrelated to their site in
their meta tags which caused pornographic websites to appear
in the search results for unrelated topics like
"Smithsonian". One by one, the major engines started
discontinuing using meta tags as part of their main
criteria. For those that still used it, the emphasis was
reduced.
The use of Spamming Techniques in the
Keyword Meta Tag opened the door for Google to take the
entire market by storm. By ignoring meta tags in general,
Google produced results that were more pure. Fueling
Google's popularity. The only meta tags Google indexes now
on a consistent basis is their
Google Meta Tags.
There are search engines on the Internet
that still read meta tags in some way, and there is much
confusion relating to them. This document will explain
everything you wanted to know about meta tags. It also
breaks down every meta tag that we know about and gives our
recommendation on the use of the tags on your site (where
appropriate).
Meta Tags have two known styles, or
attributes:
1. <META HTTP-EQUIV="name"
CONTENT="content">
2. <META NAME="name" CONTENT="content">
Follow the links to read about each Meta
Tag below:
Meta Abstract
Meta Author
Meta Content Language
Meta Content Script
Type
Meta Content Style Type
Meta Content Type
Meta Copyright
Meta Description
Meta Designer
Meta Distribution
Meta Expires
Meta Generator
Meta Google
Meta Keywords
Meta MS Smart Tags
Meta MSN (No ODP)
Meta Publisher
Meta Rating
Meta Refresh
Meta Reply-To
Meta Resource Type
Meta Revisit After
Meta Robots
Meta Set Cookie
Meta Subject
Meta Title
Meta VW96.ObjectType
Used primarily with academic papers.
Basically, this tag is for a summary of the description.
Normally, the content will be 10 words or less.
Example: <META NAME="Abstract" CONTENT="Short description of
page">
Recommendation: Will not assist you with the major search
engines. However, if your content is highly specialized,
search engines in your field of expertise could index your
site properly if this tag is present. According to testing,
none of the major engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN) use this
tag as part of their algorithm.
Top
Typically the author's name of who
created the document. This tag is not supported by the major
search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN). If you use this
tag, it is recommended to use both the author's name and
email address for contact purposes. Note that this will
increase the amount of Spam email the person listed will
receive.
Example:
<METANAME="Author"CONTENT="GeorgeCostanza,gcostanza@vandalayindustries.com">
Recommendation: This tag is optional. If you have many
individuals contributing to the content of your site, we
recommend that you use this tag to help track the author.
Top
May be used to declare the natural
language of the document. May be used by robots to
categorize by language.
Example: <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Language"
CONTENT="en-GB">
Recommendation: Do not use as our testing has concluded that
no browser or search engine reads this meta tag any longer.
Top
Specifies the default scripting language
of the document.
Example: <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Script-Type"
CONTENT="text/javascript">
Recommendation: Do not use. Search engines do not need this
tag to detect scripts, they can do so on their own. Browsers
do not use this tag either as they have other detection
methods in place.
Top
Specifies the default style sheet
language for a document.
Example: <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Style-Type"
CONTENT="text/css">
Recommendation: Do not use. Search engines do not need to
know the style sheet. Web browsers also do not look to the
meta tags for the style sheet information.
Top
As a META tag, it causes Netscape
Navigator to load the appropriate charset before displaying
the page. It is now recommended to always use this tag even
if you use a DTD declaration above the Header. Failure to do
so may cause display problems where, for instance, the
document uses UTF-8 punctuation characters but is displayed
in ISO or ASCII charsets. There are other benefits, but you
will need to be a subscriber to our
SEO Revolution Newsletter (paid membership) to get the
full scoop of what this tag can do for your site.
Example: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1">
Recommendation: Use this tag along with the DTD declaration
format from the
World Wide Web Consortium.
Top
Typically an unqualified copyright
statement. You can include copyright, trademarks, patents,
or other information here pertaining to your intellectual
property.
Example: <META NAME="Copyright" CONTENT="� 2003">
Recommendation: Not required. You should understand that
this tag will not protect your site's content or your
intellectual property. Consult your attorney to ensure you
are protected properly.
Top
A short, plain language description of
the document, usually 20-25 words or less. Search engines
that support this tag will use the information to publish on
their search results page, normally below the Title of your
site. This tag is particularly important if your document
has very little text, is a frameset, or has extensive
scripts at the top.
Example: <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Citrus fruit
wholesaler.">
Recommendation: Make your meta description as compelling as
you can, as your description often is the difference between
getting your listing clicked on in the search results or
your competitor's site.
Top
Used to signify the designer of the
website.
Example: <META NAME="Designer" CONTENT="Art Vandaley">
Recommendation: Optional. Usually this tag is used by web
designers as advertising or to catch people who hijack their
designs. It should be understood that this tag is not
supported by any search engine.
Top
There are three classifications of
distribution of your web content: Global (the entire web),
Local (reserved for the local IP block of your site), and IU
(Internal Use, not for public distribution).
Example: <META NAME="Distribution" CONTENT="Global">
Recommendation: Optional, but we highly recommend not using
it. If you want to restrict distribution, use the robots.txt
tag or your HTAccess file.
Top
The date and time after which the
document should be considered expired. Controls caching in
HTTP/1.0. An illegal Expires date, e.g. "0", is interpreted
as "now".
Example: <META HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="Wed, 26 Feb
2004 08:21:57 GMT">
Recommendation: Do not use. While this is good in concept,
it is impractical for search engines and they do not use it.
The same is true for the "revisit-after" tag. Search engines
were able to catalog these at one time, but now with indexes
over a billion pages, it just isn't feasible.
Top
Typically the name and version number of
a publishing tool used to create the page. Could be used by
tool vendors to assess market penetration.
Example: <META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="FrontPage 4.0">
Recommendation: Do not use. If you have these tags, delete
them if you can. They serve no purpose for your pages.
Top
The following options are exclusively for
use with Google:
googlebot: noarchive - do not allow google to display cached
content
googlebot: nosnippet - do not allow google to display
excerpt or cached content
googlebot: noindex - similar to the robots meta element
googlebot: nofollow
Recommendation: You generally do not need to use these tags
unless you want Google to do something specific with your
site. The Google Meta Tag is one of the few meta tags that
Google will read, index and obey.
For more info, see Google's
Remove Page.
Top
This tag declares the language used on
the website.
Example: <META NAME="Language" CONTENT="english">
Recommendation: Do not use. No known function to support
this tag presently for English based sites. Used only for
sites in other languages. No testing has been done in other
languages to verify if this meta tag does indeed work.
Top
Keywords used by some search engines to
index your document in addition to words from the title,
document body, and other areas. Typically used for synonyms
and alternates of title words. One of the principle meta
tags, along with the Description tag uses to properly index
your site by search engines that support the tags.
Example: <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="oranges, lemons,
limes">
Recommendation: Use with caution. Make sure to only use
keywords that are relevant to your site. Search engines are
known to penalize or blacklist your site for abuse. Also
remember by using this tag you are exposing your keywords to
your competitors. Five hours of keyword research can be
hijacked within just a few minutes by your competitor.
Top
Smart Tags were part of a beta test of
Internet Explorer that was removed due to negative press and
feedback from users. In short, Microsoft would sell keyword
phrases and Smart Tags would allow for those keywords to be
highlighted on web pages which would take the user to the
advertiser's site. This would mean that your site could
advertise your competitor's site without your consent.
Example: <META NAME="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing"
CONTENT="TRUE">
Recommendation: Do not use. Microsoft discontinued this
technology. If you are working with an SEO firm that demands
to insert these tags, quickly find a new SEO company.
Top
This tag will allow for your actual
description to be used in the MSN Search results as opposed
to the description used in DMOZ (Open Directory).
Example: <META Name="msnbot" CONTENT="NOODP">
Recommendation: If you are unhappy with the description from
DMOZ, which most webmasters are, use this tag.
While this is only good for MSNBot, you
can sub "ROBOTS" for "MSNBOT" in the tag to be valid for all
bots, but as of right now, MSN is the only engine that uses
descriptions straight from DMOZ. Just posting this will not
take out the DMOZ listing immediately, as it could take up
to four weeks.
Top
This is the same as the
Meta Generator tag.
Example: <META NAME="Publisher" CONTENT="FrontPage 4.0 ">
Recommendation: Do not use.
Top
Simple content rating.
Recommendation: Do not use. There are many strands of this
tag on the Internet and there is not a set form, which
suggests that you would be better off with getting a rating
from the
International Content Rating Association.
Top
Specifies a delay in seconds before the
browser automatically reloads the document or URL specified.
The number before the URL is the delay in seconds which the
browser will "pause" before the redirect is performed.
Example: <META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh"
CONTENT="3;URL=http://www.domain.com/page.html">
Recommendation: Definitely avoid. Search
engines can detect the use of this tag and they consider it
as Spam. Penalty is either ignoring the page, or banning
your site completely from the index. You should use a 301 or
302 redirect instead. You can get more information on how to
do redirects properly through out
SEO Revolution Newsletter archive (paid membership).
Top
This is a "Spammers Paradise." Bots that
spammers use to harvest email addresses pick up your email
in this tag and hit you fast and hard with offers a plenty.
Example: <meta name="reply-to" content="your.email@address.com"
/>
Recommendation: Definitely avoid. You will receive a large
increase in the amount of Spam e-mail if you use this tag.
Top
Declaring the type of resource the page
is.
Example: <META name="resource-type" content="document">
Recommendation: Do not use. Use the
DTD declaration
instead.
Top
This tag tells the search engine when to
come back and index your site again. It has been stated that
this tag will boost your site's rankings with search engines
that credit pages that are fresh.
Example: <META NAME="Revisit-After" CONTENT="30 days Days">
Recommendation: Do not use. Search engines at one time
supported this tag, but due to the large indexes, search
engines only visit through links from other sites. Instead
of using this tag, improve your link popularity. Think about
it, do you really think that if you "tell" a search engine
to come back at a certain time it will? Search engines do
what they want, and they are not about to obey a "come back
in 30 days" command from your site.
Top
Controls search engine robots on a
per-page basis.
Example: <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,FOLLOW">
Robots may traverse this page but not index it.
Recommendation: Do not use. If you need to control the
search engine robots, use a robots.txt file or modify your
HTAccess file instead. It is more widely supported and is
not ignored as this tag sometimes is. Many people are
concerned that if a bot comes to their site through a
subpage and not their home page, the robots.txt file will
not be read. This is false. The robots.txt is read each time
a good bot comes to a new domain. You can verify this
through your web logs.
Top
This is one method of setting a "cookie"
in the user’s Web browser. If you use an expiration date,
the cookie is considered permanent and will be saved to disk
(until it expires), otherwise it will be considered valid
only for the current session and will be erased upon closing
the Web browser.
Example: <META HTTP-EQUIV="Set-Cookie"
CONTENT="cookievalue=xxx;expires=Wednesday, 21-Oct-98
16:14:21 GMT; path=/">
Recommendation: Do not use. While this
meta tag was used years ago to set cookies, now, cookies can
be set and customized very easily. If you need assistance
with cookies, our programming staff can assist you for a
nominal fee.
Top
Based on an early version of the
Dublin Core report, using a defined schema of document
types such as FAQ, HOWTO, etc.
Recommendation: Do not use. These meta tags are not
supported by any search engine or major browser and we
recommend that you not use them on your site.
Top
Declares the subject of the web site.
Example: <META NAME="Subject" CONTENT="Web Page Subject">
Recommendation: Do not use. This tag is not supported by any
third party agent, including browsers and search engines.
Top
This tag would normally have the same
title as contained in the <TITLE></TITLE> tag.
Example: <META NAME="Title" CONTENT="Page Title Here">
Recommendation: Use with caution. According to testing,
Yahoo! and MSN index this tag, but its effect on the
algorithm is unknown due to inconsistent test results.
Top
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© 2003-2006, WebMarketingNow.com
Jerry West is the Director of Internet Marketing for
Web Marketing Now. He has been consulting on the web
since 1996 and has assisted hundreds of companies gain an
upper-hand over their competition. Visit
Web Marketing Now for the latest in marketing tips that
are tested and proven.
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