One of the most over used elements in on page SEO is Meta tags. Meta tags are used extensively by search engine optimizers. In past Meta tags is powerful factor to pull keywords. Things have changed; search engines knew that web masters can easily manipulate this algorithm. Google is giving least importance for some of these tags, having said that some tags still influence search engines.
Use Meta tags not just to pull keywords but to tell what your site is about to search engines. Meta tags will help search engines to crawl and index your website. META tags are those tags that are placed in the head of the HTML document. For e.g. (These tags are in between headers)
< HEAD>
<TITLE> SEO consultant</TITLE>
<META name = “description” content = “describe about your website” >
</HEAD>
The META Tags can be classified into three attributes:
So here we go with various types of Meta tags:
The Meta Description Tag
<meta name="description" content="text">
Use this to describe your site. Be descriptive. Do not stuff with keywords. You can use up to 160 characters to describe the content of that particular page. Of course you can use more than 160 but search engines display only 160 characters in SERP.
There are ample of cases where webmaster s has abused Meta tag description by stuffing with keywords. Remember Meta description tag is to improve CTR. Write compelling content, let it be informative. Write content with keywords in such a way that visitors must get an idea about your products and services.
The Meta Keywords Tag
<meta name="keywords" content="text">
It’s no more part of algorithm. It’s no more in 200 + signals to rank in Google. Still you can insert this tag. Yes there is a reason behind this, in fact two reasons. Meta keywords can be used as a reference for new SEOs. In the absence of SEO we can know which keywords he or she is targeting just like html comment tag. The second reason is that though Yahoo claimed that it won’t consider as an algorithm still it is using this one as a ranking factor. Search engine land has clearly given evidence for this. In near future Yahoo, Bing may discard this tag as a ranking factor.
The Meta Robots Tag
These tags are mainly used to control crawling and indexing the web pages from search engines. Be careful while using. These tags decide which page to index, follow links, and block to search engines. Its up to you how effectively you use when it comes for page rank sculpting (any how myths on page rank sculpting is revealed).
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>
This tag does not allow to index but links on that particular page can be followed.
<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow”>
This tag does not allow the links from the page to follow but can be indexed.
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow”>
With this tag you can neither index nor follow links from that page.
<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOARCHIVE”>
This tag prevents cache links from Google search results. This is useful to portal sites where content is often changed.
<META name=”ROBOTS” content=”NOODP”>
NOODP tags prevent the content of Open Directory Project (ODP) from displaying that appears in below page.
<META name=”ROBOTS” content=”NOSNIPPET”>
Function of NOSnippet is to prevent from displaying the description. Only Title is allowed in SERP.
<META name=”ROBOTS” content=”noydir”>
This prevents Yahoo from using the description that used in the Yahoo! Directory.
The Title Tag
<title>here you can come up with title of the page</title>
From technically perspective this is not a meta tag. Commonly this is used with description tag. Title Tag is one of the strong ranking factors of search engine.
The Meta Language Tag
<META NAME=”Language” CONTENT=”english”>
This tag is used to declare the language used on the website. There is slight difference between the above; here this tag helps to categorize properly by the search engines
The Meta Author Tag
<META NAME=”Author” CONTENT=”Adam philip”>
This is used to display the author of the document
The Meta tag Copyright
<meta name=”copyright” content=”name of owner”>
This tag acts as a statement to protect your content, image, logo of your website.
The Meta Tag Distribution
<meta name=”distribution” content=”global”>
Use this tag to define the level of distribution of a web page. With distribution tag you can target either globally or locally.
The Meta REVISIT-AFTER tag
<meta name=”revisit-after” content=”5 days”>
With this tag you can inform to search engine on when to visit and index the website. This tag is not followed by Google. Google has its own internal bots which decide when to visit the website.
The Meta Content Language Tag
<META HTTP-EQUIV=”CONTENT-LANGUAGE” CONTENT=”en-US”>
This is used to declare the primary language of the web page or document. It is better to use for foreign language websites.
The Meta Refresh Tag
<META HTTP-EQUIV=”REFRESH” CONTENT=”15;URL=http://www.yourwebsite.com/index.html”>
This helps to specify a delay in seconds before the browser automatically reloads the web page. This is used to redirect browsers to other pages. It is highly recommended to use 301 or 302 redirect.
The Meta Content Type
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″>
Define the charset using this tag. It mainly depends on your operation system of the server where your pages are hosted.
The Meta Resource type Tag
<meta http-equiv=”Resource-Type” content=”document”>
This tag helps to indicate the type of web page to search engines, helpful to index and categorize your website.
The Dublin Core tag – DC tag
I am big fan of researching competitor web site’s source code. Some months back I was doing competitive analysis for a keyword and this is what I got. These below tags are called Dublin Core tags.
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is an open organization engaged in the development of interoperable metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models. For more information visit: http://dublincore.org/metadata-basics/
<meta name=”DC.Title” content=”SEO consultant” />
<meta name=”DC.Keywords” content=”SEO consultant” />
<meta name=”DC.Description” content=” blah blah blah.” />
<meta name=”DC.Author” content=” name or your website” />
<meta name=”DC.Creator” content=”name or your website” />
<meta name=”DC.Creator.Jurisdiction” content=”Country” />
<meta name=”DC.Creator.CorporateName” content=”company;” />
<meta name=”DC.Language” scheme=”RFC1766″ content=”en” />
<meta name=”DC.Identifier” content=” URL” />
Geo Targeting Meta Tag
Long back in 2005 webmasters started to use Geo tags to provide specific location-based services what we now call as local search optimization.
[ META NAME=”geo.position” CONTENT=”latitude; longitude” ]
[ META NAME=”geo.placename” CONTENT=”place name” ]
[ META NAME=”geo.region” CONTENT=”country code” ]
Ok, here are some more miscellaneous Meta tags:
<meta name="abstract" content="a gist of your website ">
<meta name="generator" content="Frontpage">
<meta name="no-email-collection" content="link or terms">
<meta name="rating" content="general or adult">
<meta http-equiv="Set-Cookie" content="name, date">
<meta http-equiv="Window-Target" content="_value">
Let me throw a question .Which of these above tags are useless and out dated? And specify any other Meta tags you know.
Tags: meta tag elements,
meta tags
