The Meta Tag Elements - Webmaster Forums UK SEO SEM Webmaster Community Forum

#1 (**permalink**) 07-08-2005, 10:14 AM

The Meta Tag Elements

TITLE

Is placed at the top of your <head> </head> tags in your HTML document.
Note: FrontPage and other web page creation programs places the title where it wants to in the document between the <head> </head> tags. Remember to manually move the <title> of your web page to the uppermost top, below the <head> tag.
Never use more than 80 characters in your title.
<head>
<title>The Name Of Your Page</title>
</head>

PICS

The next element is called the PICS tag or label. It is not a necessity but it does help in showing spiders and web browsers your child safe rating for your site. You get your coding from Safe Surf or I.C.R.A. {one tag for each rating resource}.
More information can be attained here http://www.w3.org/pics
<meta http-equiv="PICS-Label" content='' ">

GENERATOR

This tag tells what web-publishing tool (program) you used to create the web page. It is not a necessary tag element so you do not have to use it but most web creation programs will use it for you anyway.
<meta name="generator" content=" ">

S-Bots

This Meta tag should always be used because it instructs the search engine robot (spider) what to do with your pages.
<meta name="robots" content=" ">
ALL - index all pages (some engines have a limit on how many pages can be indexed per site) and follow the hyperlinks to other pages.

INDEX - Index the specific page but do not follow the links.

FOLLOW - The search engine robots will follow and index linked pages.

NOINDEX - Continue onto linked pages but do not index current page.

NOFOLLOW - Do not follow the associated linked documents.

DISTRIBUTION

This Meta tag designates the scope of distribution of your document. This can be used for content control. Web servers will not service a local document to web visitors.
<meta name="distribution" content=" ">
GLOBAL
LOCAL

COPYRIGHT

This Meta tag clearly states, in a manner acceptable by prevailing laws, who owns the copyright of the document text or design. You should practice using this tag on ALL web pages.
<meta name="copyright" content="date | your name or name of company">

AUTHOR

The author Meta tag is used to declare the author of the web site or web page.
<meta name="author" content=" ">

LANGUAGE

This Meta tag identifies the language of the web page context.
You can edit the tags into any valid language and country code.
<meta http-equiv="language" content="eng">
<meta http-equiv="dialect" content="us">

Rating

This Meta tag is a simple site-rating scheme. This may be obsolete because of PICS label usage.
<meta name="rating" content="">
Safe For Kids
14 Years
General
Mature
Restricted

CLASSIFICATION

This Meta tag defines the site classification. This tag can and will be used some search engines to place your site in an appropriate category.
<meta name="classification" content=" ">
DOCUMENT EXPIRES
Caches to determine when to fetch a fresh copy of the associated document can use this Meta tag.
<meta http-equiv="expires" content=" ">

REPLY TO
This Meta tag is used to identify to whom the visitor should send comments or replies. This tag can be a nuisance since e-mail harvesters will search your web pages for this tag to harvest the e-mail address for the purposes of Spam. It is not recommended to use this tag any longer.
<meta http-equiv="reply-to" content=" ">

REVISIT

This Meta tag is used to inform the search bot/web crawler when it should revisit your web document to update its index.

The recommended usage of this tag is: NO LESS THAN 30 DAYS and NO MORE than 1 year.
<meta name="revisit-after" content="30 days">

PRAGMA

This Meta tag is used to inform the browser that it should retrieve a new copy of the document versus using a cached version.
<meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache">

KEYWORDS META TAG

This Meta tag informs the search bot/web crawler what the main points are of the document it is reviewing. Never repeat any keyword more that 6 times within the keywords tag.
No more than 1000 characters in your keywords tag.
Never place words in your keywords tag that is not in the visual text of the body of your web page.
<meta name="keywords" content=" ">

Description Meta Tag

This Meta tag informs the search bot/web crawler or visitor, via a brief synopsis, what the page is all about.
No more than 200 characters should be used.

<meta name="description" content=" ">

KingPin · #2 (**permalink**) 04-07-2008, 09:53 AM

Most of them tags are of non-importance. The only ones that really matter are the Title and Description tag.

META Keywords are optional for the META Crawlers still active but the big three don't use them.

KP

amit · #3 (**permalink**) 04-07-2008, 10:55 AM

I agree with what K.P. said there are so many Tags which can be applied but all depends upon the usability and importance of the which tag to be used.

The best Meta Tag which are generally utilized and are of importance according to me are:-

Meta Description
Meta Keyword
Meta Robots

These tags are of major importance.

cooldude007 · #4 (**permalink**) 04-11-2008, 07:37 AM

Title tag is the one that really matters sometimes Google use the meta description sometime they use the keywords on the contents...

TeamPlayer · #5 (**permalink**) 04-11-2008, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KingPin

Most of them tags are of non-importance. The only ones that really matter are the Title and Description tag.

META Keywords are optional for the META Crawlers still active but the big three don't use them.

KP

That`s exactly what I`ve heard from several sources. I do use the keywords tag, but they`re not as important as the Title and Description.

BenjArriola · #6 (**permalink**) 04-11-2008, 03:50 PM

For me I have various reasons to use these, but if I would sum it up into 1 sentence for each meta tag I use, these are my top reasons:

Title Tag: Helps in ranking.
Meta Descriptions: Helps making the SERP more inviting to click if well written.
Meta Keywords: You can take this out, but it give me a reminder for myself what I was really intentionally targeting.

dot123 · #7 (**permalink**) 04-17-2008, 03:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BenjArriola

For me I have various reasons to use these, but if I would sum it up into 1 sentence for each meta tag I use, these are my top reasons:

Title Tag: Helps in ranking.
Meta Descriptions: Helps making the SERP more inviting to click if well written.
Meta Keywords: You can take this out, but it give me a reminder for myself what I was really intentionally targeting.

I agree. I use these 3 and it helps.

Trapped · #8 (**permalink**) 04-19-2008, 01:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cooldude007

Title tag is the one that really matters sometimes Google use the meta description sometime they use the keywords on the contents...

Google uses the keywords from the content when a page is listed in the SERPs for keywords that are not found in the meta description but are indeed in the body content. However meta description is not as important for search engine rankings as it is important to catch the surfers attention. Giving the surfers a brief "description" of the content that your sites shares it raises their interest to click your site in the SERPs and find out whats more to read in there.

I have also notice some small help for search engine rankings from the meta description, but the help is not worth even to mention as it is minimal, but since the day when I tried to test how the click through rate would improve on pages that are already ranking with a new and more intriguing meta description is really worth to mention (those 30% in clicks more after the change).

Webtistic · #9 (**permalink**) 04-22-2008, 09:19 AM

The days of keyword meta tags being at all important are long gone.

The crucial meta tag is TITLE, which should have your main keyphrase immediately in the copy if possible...

KingPin · #10 (**permalink**) 04-22-2008, 10:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Webtistic

The days of keyword meta tags being at all important are long gone.

I don't agree with that. The META Description is a very important tag. I value it next to the Title Tag.

Why? well you can rank number 1 for the best keyword in the world but if you're description (the one showing in the search engine results) is crap, your CTR will not be as good.

Humans are curious animals by nature so if you create a description that gets the human mind wanting and thinking it will increase CTR and possibly conversion (if your site is good enough and what the user wants).

KP