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HTML Meta Tags

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.

Meta tags may boost some of your search engine rankings, but you cannot acieve high rankings with meta tags alone.

The two most important meta tags are the description tag and the keyword tag.

 

Listed on this page is a complete guide to all the meta tags that can be used and how to use them.

Some meta tags are more advatageous than others when it comes to optimizing your site, read on and find out which meta tags will make more difference to the ranking of your website.

 

Meta Description Tag

The Meta Description Tag is a part of 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 search engines result pages (SERP), just below the Title Tag as a brief description of your page.

In the Search Engine Results Pages, after reading the Title, a user usually studies the description of the page and decides whether she wants to visit your site or not. 

It is therefore important that your Meta Description Tag uses your best keyword phrases and is nicely composed describing your page offering while enticing the user to click on your listing. 

 

Points to remember

  • The meta description tag should be an informative and interesting summary of your web page 
  • Excessive keyword repetition should be avoided. Pay more attention to the sequence of your keywords and include the most important keywords at the begining.
  • Each page of your website needs a different Meta Description Tag using the relevant keyword phrases.
  • 25 - 30 words is the ideal legth for the meta description tag.

 

Keyword Meta Tag

The meta keyword tag can be  useful to reinforce the terms that are important in your body copy. The keyword tag is ignored by some search engine crawlers, but for those that support this tag, it will only make a difference to the ranking of your website if the words contained within this tag are also evident within your web page. However, this tag will have an adverse effect on your search engine ranking if you repeat a particular keyword too often, so be careful.

 

Points to remember

  • Use your keywords that already appear in your body copy
  • Don't repeat keywords too often
  • Use different keywords for each of your web pages based on the text contained in these pages.
  • If your site has content of interest to a specific geographic location be sure to include the actual location in your keyword meta.  

 

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.

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.

 

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 if your site is for general, restricted or adult audiences. <HEAD> <META name= "Rating" content= "General"> </HEAD> 

Meta Author Tag: identifies the author of a particular web page. <META name="Author" content="Author Information">

Meta Distribution 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 are: 
<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.
<HEAD> <META name="Revisit" content="4 weeks">  

Meta Refresh Tag: is used to redirect a visitor from one page to another or refresh the same page in a specified time. 
<HEAD> <META name="Refresh" content="60 seconds">  
 

Summary

In short Meta information is used to communicate information to the search engine crawlers.

  • Meta Robots: This tag enjoys full support, but you only need it if you DO NOT want your pages indexed.
  • Meta Description: This tag enjoys much support, and it is well worth using.
  • Meta Keywords: This tag is only supported by some major crawlers and probably isn't worth the time to implement.
  • Meta Everything Else: Any other meta tag you see is ignored by the major crawlers, though they may be used by specialized search engines.  


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