Meta Tags
If you are familiar with Search Engine Optimization
techniques, it is most likely that you must have already come across a lot of
information on Meta Tags. In this article, we simply talk about what Meta Tags
are, their importance, the important Meta Tags and useful tips on how to
optimize your Meta Tags for a better ranking with the search engines.
What are Meta Tags?
Meta Tags are the information inserted in the
<head> area of the HTML code of your web pages, where apart from the
Title Tag, other information inserted is not visible to the person surfing your
web page but is intended for the search engine crawlers. Meta Tags are included
so that the search engines are able to list your site in their indexes more
accurately. A typical Meta Tag would look as given below. Here is what this
page contains; you can see this if you click on the view “Page source” from
your browser menu.
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Creating Successful meta tags, list of all
meta tags, title tag limit, href tag, meta tag analysis</TITLE>
<meta name="description"
content="Successful Meta tags: What are meta tags? Meta tag analysis, list
of all meta tags, title tag limit, creating meta tags, background meta tags.
This article covers the most important aspects of meta tags in relation to website
optimization or SEO. ">
<meta name="keywords" content="meta
tags, meta tag refresh, meta tag optimization, meta tag analysis, meta tag
keywords, what are meta tags, successful meta tags, using meta tags, html meta
tags, common meta tags, author meta tag, alt tags, list of all meta tags, meta
tags html, meta tag description, about meta tags">
</HEAD>
Using Meta Tags in HTML is not necessary while making
your web pages. There
are many websites that don’t feel the requirement to use
Meta Tags at all. In
short Meta information is used to communicate information
to the search engine
crawlers that a human visitor may not be concerned with.
Info seek and AltaVista
were the first major crawler based search engines to
support Meta keywords Tag
in 1996. Ink to mi and Lycos too followed thereafter.
Why are Meta Tags used?
Meta Tags were originally designed to provide webmasters
with a way to help search engines know what their site was about. This in turn
helped the search engines decide how to rank the sites in their search results.
Making Meta Tags is
a simple process.
As the competition increased, webmasters started
manipulating this tool through spamming of keywords. In turn most search
engines withdrew their support to Meta keywords Tag, which included Lycos and
AltaVista. From being considered as one of the most reliable and important
tool, Meta Tags are now often abused. In the present day scenario a vital
feature that the Meta Tags provide to the websites is the ability to control,
to a certain extent, how some search engines describe its web pages. Apart from
this, Meta Tags also offer the ability to specify that a certain website page
should not be indexed.
Using Meta Tags, however, provides no guarantee that your
website page would rank highly in the search engine rankings. Due to the
rampant abuse and manipulation of the Meta keywords Tag by webmasters, most
search engines
don’t support it anymore.
Types of Meta Tags
The more important Meta Tags are discussed below in
detail. A listof several more MetaTags is given at the end of this article.
The Title Tag
The Title Tag is not a Meta Tag. However, since it’s a
very important Tag, we thought it necessary to discuss it here. The Title Tag
is an HTML code that shows the words that appear at the top title bar of your
browser. The Title Tag is not displayed anywhere else on the page. It is these
words or phrase that appear as the title of your page in the hyperlink listings
on the search engine results.
The users in-turn click on this hyperlink to go to your
website from Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Therefore, the significance of
the Title Tag is evident as all search engines use the Title Tag to gather
information about your site.
Syntax for the Title Tag is :
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Creating Successful meta tags, list of all
meta tags, title tag limit, href tag, meta tag analysis</TITLE>
</HEAD>
Useful Tips for Writing the Title Tag
The Title Tag plays a vital role in determining your
site’s search engine rankings. One needs to pay attention to the words that
appear in your Title Tag and the order in which they appear. As the tag
suggests, Title Tag announces the
summary of the content appearing on the page. Think of it
as a crisply worded sales phrase and include your most relevant and specific
keywords or key phrases in the Title Tag describing the content of the page.
You could put the product or service you are offering in
the Title Tag, instead of your firm or company’s name. For example, if you have
a site offering kitchen appliances, instead of having a title like
“www.cooking.com”, you could have a specific keyword rich Title Tag like “Bar
Blenders: Waring Kitchenaid Hamilton beach Cuisinart bar blenders and blender”.
This title would cover several keyword phrases like- bar blenders, bar blender,
Waring bar blenders, Kitchenaid bar blenders, Hamilton Beach bar blenders,
Cuisinart bar blenders, blender etc.
Most users search for specific products and services, not
company names. If you do wish to include the site name, then you can add it at
the end of the Title Tag. Having your most important keyword phrases towards the
beginning of the Title Tag helps display your title in bold in the SERP (search
engines results page). Title Tags are also the text that gets captured when
users bookmark your page.
Google usually reads about 90 characters of your Title
Tag. So, leverage this length to cover prominent keywords relevant to the page.
A common mistake webmasters make is to have the same Title Tag throughout the
site. You must
leverage different Title Tags for each page and
customizing it depending on the content theme of each page. Also read our
detailed article on Title Tag Optimization.
The Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description Tag is an HTML code that allows you
to give a short and concise summary of your web page content. The words placed
in this Meta Tag, are often used in the SERP, just below the Title Tag as a
brief description of your page. In the Search Engine Results Pages, after
reading the Title of the page, a user goes through the description of the page
and decides whether she wants to go to your site or not. It is therefore
important that your Meta Description Tag is nicely composed describing your
page offering while enticing the user to click on your listing
Syntax for Meta Description Tag is :
<HEAD>
<meta name="description"
content="Successful Meta tags: What are meta tags? Meta tag analysis, list
of all meta tags, title tag limit, creating meta tags, background meta tags.
This article covers the most important aspects of meta tags in relation to
website optimization or SEO.">
</HEAD>
Useful Tips for Writing Meta Description Tag
In case you have not provided any Meta Description Tag to
your web page, the search engines try to make one for you, often using the
first few words of your web page or a text selection where the keyword phrases
searched by the users
appear. If the Search Engine makes up a description by
picking up text from your page, it is not necessary that the generated description
would do justice to your web page.
The Meta Description Tag should be written in such a way
that it interests the user, thus tempting her to click on the link to your site
and visit your web page.
The Meta Description Tag needs to be kept brief yet
informative. About 25-30 words description should do fine. Keywords and key
phrases should be included in the Meta Description Tag, though care should be
taken not to repeat them too often. Like the Title Tag, the Meta Description
Tag should be different and customized for each page depending on the content
theme of each page. For more information on Meta Description Tag, read our
other article on Meta Description Tag Optimization.
The Meta Keywords Tag
Most search engines do not read the Meta Keywords Tag
anymore. It is okay to ignore the Meta Keywords Tags. However, if you feel more
comfortable using it, you can have about 15 important non-repetitive keywords
in this Tag, separated by commas.
Syntax for Meta Keywords Tag is :
<HEAD>
<META name="keywords" content="Keyword
phrases that describeyour web page">
</HEAD>
Meta Robots Tag
The Meta Robots Tag gives you the ability to specify
whether search engines should index that page or follow the links appearing on
that page. However, there is no need for using Meta Robots tag if one is
already using detailed robots.txt file to block any specific indexing. Read our
article on Working with the robots.txt file.
The various commands used under Meta Robots Tag are :
Index: allows the spider to index that page.
Noindex: instructs the spider not to index the page.
Follow: instructs the spider to follow the links from
that page and index them.
Nofollow: instructs the spider not to follow links from
that page for indexing.
<HEAD>
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
<meta name="robots"
content="noindex,follow">
<meta name="robots"
content="index,nofollow">
<meta name="robots"
content="noindex,nofollow">
</HEAD>
Note: Use only one of the above given commands.
If you have not specified any Meta Robots Tag on a page,
by default, the spiders understand that the page and all the links appearing on
that page are open for indexing. Therefore, it makes more sense to use this
Meta Tag in case you don’t want certain parts of your web page indexed. Apart
from these popular Meta Tags, there are few more Tags that are not so popular.
These are :
Meta Refresh Tag
The Meta Refresh Tag is used to redirect a visitor from
one page to another or refresh the same page in a specified time. Same page
refresh comes in use when the page content is changing very quickly, for
example if there is a running
score of a game or stock prices updates happening on that
page. When inserted into an HTML document, it causes the user’s browser to load
the same or a new web page after a specified number of seconds. This Meta Tag
has been manipulated and is sometimes abused as a tool to “bait and switch” a
user from a doorway page. To refresh the current page :
<HEAD>
<meta http-equiv="refresh"
content="60">
</HEAD>
Content = "60" denotes refresh after 60 seconds
To redirect to another page :
<HEAD>
<meta http-equiv="refresh"
content="2;url=http://www.seorank.com/">
</HEAD>
Using a Meta Refresh Tag to redirect to another page is
likely to get it dropped from search engines, since this method is tagged as a
doorway page in search engine algorithms. Unless you have a compelling reason
to use Meta Refresh Tag, do not use it.
Meta Author Tag
The Meta Author Tag identifies the author of a particular
web page. Though not highly supported, its format usually includes the name,
e-mail address of the Webmaster, name of the company or the Internet address.
<META name="Author" content="Author
Information">
Meta Distribution Tag
The Distribution Meta Tag identifies the level of distribution
of your web page and how it should be further classified in context to the
World Wide Web. The three forms of distribution supported by this Tag are :
‘Global’ specifies that your web page is for mass
distribution.
‘Local’ lets you specify that your document is for local
distribution only.
‘Internal Use or IU’ specifies that your document is not
intended for public distribution.
Syntax for different Meta Distribution Tags (Use only one
of the following) :
<HEAD>
<META name="Distribution" content="Global">
<META name="Distribution" content=
“Local”>
<META name="Distribution" content= “IU”>
</HEAD>
Meta Revisit Tag
Historically, the Meta Revisit Tag was believed to
specify how often a search engine should visit a site for re-indexing. Although
not proven, webmasters could indicate the frequency of how often their content
changes and is ready for a re-index by search engines. These days, much as one
would like to, one cannot command the re-visit frequency of any search engine,
unless you go the PFI route.
<HEAD>
<META name="Revisit-After" content="X
Days">
</HEAD>
Note: X indicates the number
List of other Meta Tags
Abstract Meta Tag: gives an overview of the entire web
page in a sentence.
<HEAD>
<META name="Abstract" content="Abstract
phrase">
</HEAD>
Copyright Meta Tag: gives copyright information about
your page, which you wish to disclose.
<HEAD>
<META name="Copyright"
content="Copyright Statement">
</HEAD>
Expires Meta Tag: tells the search engines when the
content on your web site would expire.
<HEAD>
<META name="Expires" content="Mon, 22
Jan 2004 17:45:05 GMT">
</HEAD>
Language Meta Tag: defines the language used on your web
page.
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Language"
content="EN">
</HEAD>
Ratings Meta Tag: tells the search engines ifyour site is
for general, restricted or adult audiences.
<HEAD>
<META name=“Rating”content= “General”>
</HEAD>
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