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Here's a list of useful META tags you can use.
name="keywords" content="keywords go here"
This tag is a must. It lets you specify keywords people might use when looking for your site. Enter as many as you can think of, but don't repeat each word more than once.
name="description" content="description goes here"
Here you can enter a short description for your site. Avoid using phrases like "the best" .. Keep the description short, but to the point. Usually, this is what a person will see as the title when using a search engine.
http-equiv="expires" content="expiration date (Example: Mon, 24 Dec 2001 23:00:00 MST)"
If you want to make sure that the visitor gets the latest version of your page, enter an expiration date in the past. Or, simply enter the date when the page will become outdated.
http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache"
This tag tells IE not to cache the page.
name="robots" content="instructions go here"
This tag tells a SE spider whether to index a page or not (index/noindex), and whether to follow links on the page or not (follow/nofollow). You can use these in any combination you want.
index, followindex, nofollownoindex, follownoindex, nofollowname="author" content="author's or company's name"
Pretty self explanatory. Information about who is the author goes here. This information will for example be showed in the page info for Mozilla users.
name="copyright" content="copyright information"
Pretty self explanatory as well. The proper copyright information starts with the word 'Copyright' followed by the copyright symbol, the year(s) you claim copyright, and your name (or company). Example:
Copyright © 1998-2002, DrDoc Systemshttp-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"
Is your site using a certain character set? Well, here you can specify which character map to use. As long as you are using only basic latin characters (a-z, no funky symbols that can't be typed on a standard keyboard), this tag can be omitted. But if you are using certain character entities (like àçëíðñø) you should use this tag to ensure that they will be displayed properly.
1. reading each post in here about the "meta keywords" tag is less effective than forgetting the whole thing. Still use them, because there are many "cut and paste" search engines on smaller sites that rely on keywords.
2. All the above mentioned good use of description and title, correct use of CSS (H tags in logical size order)
Huge issue, you have to wonder "what is what" what what is worth what. Some of the things I have read I believe have such a small affect on things they are a waste of time thinking about them (no offence anyone).
.....and some meta tags are just a waste of space. Opinions will vary here.
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-gb">
<title>Yeah</title>
<meta name="description" content="forhumanconsumption">
<meta name="keywords" content="yeah...no commas btw">
This is what I will stick to for now :)
/edited typo
(edited by: brotherhood_of_LAN at 9:15 pm (utc) on June 1, 2002)
charsetOf course you should specify charset! But, when you do so, try to use the equivalent ISO charset instead, since this is more widely supported by browsers and operating systems ;)
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-gb">
<title>Yeah</title>
<meta name="description" content="forhumanconsumption">
<meta name="keywords" content="yeah...no commas btw">
Better than the kitchen-sink approach, but I still say Content-Language is better handled as a server header rather than an HTML one.
Also, HTML 4.0 provides for identifying document language with the LANG attribute of the HTML element, like this:
<html lang="en-us">
It's more compact, and consistant with other language identifiers in HTML. More people (and programs) should use it.
Nice tip 'Brother' - but I dont understand why 3 full-stops (periods) are better than a single comma. :)
On a serious note though, while extracting your back teeth, why avoid using commas if it is particular phrases you are targetting?
Sorry to ask, but I'm quite new to this.
I can't reference the exact thread, but there are a few actually....all referencing the same topic and coming to the same conclusion.
More permutations can be made by search engine robots using the meta tag WITHOUT commas, ie allowing the freedom of the word combination to be re-arranged
id be inclined to accept that either way, and appreciate the miniscule bandwidth I would save, which is perhaps as worth as a meta keyword tag itself :)
The discussion as to meta tags and your competitors use of them is somewhat irrelevant.
There is many more attributes on a web page that have signifcantly more weight when ranking in the most used search engines.
That being said ... there is still value in using them with older or less used search engines as well as the distinct possibility that a ranked position "might" be gained when competition is really tight.
Disadvantage ... the more characters (bytes) on a web page the less attractive it becomes the "google" for one.
In the end, its each to their own
Rod
If you do, don't get too greeting by trying to make your entire web page and site in <h1> (example - as the body text).
This could be perceived as spam and may get your site banned.
When used in moderation (As short title page title) this can have a dramatic effect (Along with targeted keywords in the title).
to my knowledge - yes - the important SE's take them into account, but they are nothing to do with making intelligent use of meta tags ;)
I guess this meta tag thread warrants a few threads in related areas, seems to be a popular 'un :)
I was thinking in terms of if they were a valid addition to the keyword tag (for what the tag is worth).
Yes and Yes again.
actual content holds alot more weight but every bit helps.
thanx again ! :)
You might also consider posting to the Google forum if you did not find answers to your questions after a site search. The Google forum holds a wealth of information.
[webmasterworld.com...]
We need to keep this thread on topic which is details Meta Tag useage and strategies. Other topics should be posted as new threads in the appropriate forums.
Then I began to understand that the description meta tag showed up under the page title on many search engines, so I started writing what was more like advertising copy - trying to draw the click. And to a degree I was successful in getting more clicks out of the same position with that kind of copy - for a while.
Then along came Google, and they don't publish meta descriptions, they publish text snippets from the sentences where the search terms appear on the page. And people began to get used to reading the "description" area looking for clues amid the "ransom note" style text as to whether they wanted this particular page.
After a while, other search engines that still published the meta description started truncating it, sometimes with embarrasing results. And my marketing copy started to read like - well, like easy to ignore marketing copy.
So now I'm back to writing true descriptions of the page. My purpose is to tell the searcher "Here is exactly what you will find on this particular page. If that's what you're looking for, come on over!"
I don't care so much now about getting lots of clicks as much as I care about getting the RIGHT clicks...and preferably lots of those. So I work to make the description tag accurate and complete, above all. And then, when that job's done, perhaps I'll go for some marketing sparkle if I am inspired.
But good marketing copy takes a lot of editing and re-writing and sometimes the muse is not with me. However, I can always be accurate and that does the job very well.
[edited by: tedster at 9:40 am (utc) on June 3, 2002]
As BOL stated, smaller search engines/spiders still rely on the Title, Description, and Keywords tags.
I don't care so much now about getting lots of clicks as much as I care about getting the RIGHT clicks
Tedster, if that isn't reason enough to write a clear, concise description, then I don't know what is... WELL PUT!
<meta name="description" content="Benefits of providing a concise description of webpage contents" /> ;)
best wishes
Interesting question, and the answer in part explains why I'm careful about what and how many words I use in the meta keywords tag. Way back in 2000, Brett picked up on "themes" pretty much before anybody else did, and wrote an article called:
Analysis and Dissection of the Theme Based Search Engine [searchengineworld.com],
which you should definitely read.
In it he says:
Theme Determination:- The theme indexer first pulls out titles and indexes that data,
- then it indexes meta tags,
- then major headings on a page,
- then the text content of all the pages,
- finally it looks at all the links on the site.
When I say indexes, it first strips all HTML code, common words, and then looks at the density of the remaining words. The last thing it does is compare the highest ranking words to one another. By using root word stemming and extrapolation it can determine your sites theme with pretty good accuracy.
He also talks about keywords:
...start by thinking up ten top keywords that relate to your site. Stay ON THEME when you think these up. Be careful not to contaminate your keywords with closely related but obfuscative keywords. If your site is about rocket ships, be careful not to put oars, rudders, or sails on your site or search engines may decide your site is about boats.Once you have your ten keywords, make sure they are in EVERY meta keyword tag on your site. Try to hit every keyword you can in your content with one page of content dedicated for each keyword.
The keywords tag has become less important since the article was written, but I still use it as a form of discipline, if nothing else.
Now, higher up on this thread, I reference an
earlier thread about keywords [webmasterworld.com] in which I talk about how I apply a variation of Brett's suggestion. Basically, what I say is:
An approach that's evolved from that has worked well for me. I focus the entire site to about 10 to 12 prime target words, get those words on every page, and then optimize each of my main target pages for 3 to 5 of those words. My meta keyword tag consists of those prime target words, arranged in prioritized order for each page. It's not quite as cut and dry or simple as this, and a lot depends on competiveness, but this is roughly how I approach a lot of sites.
Another factor that has influenced this approach... as the keywords tag has been looked at more skeptically by the engines, it's likely that some engines that look at meta keywords only look at a very limited number of characters in the tag. I think I once saw 80 characters cited for AltaVista.
This approach, of having a highly focused core around which I optimize, has (along with a good linking strategy) been serving me well on most engines. It also seems to be working well with Teoma's algo... though I don't know if this is due to internal linking from related pages, which is what the focused core would give me... or whether I've just been fortunate in who links to me.
Another way of looking at it... while the actual importance of the keywords tag is questionable, I don't think the importance of site focus in competitive areas is in question. And since the tag is about keywords, the tag should be at least as focused, if not more, than the rest of the site.
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 1:36 am (utc) on June 4, 2002]
Again Thanx ALL :)
Can you tell me what the benefit is of having IE not cache the page??
Richard Lowe
I''m new and have been reading this forum for 3 days now but wasn't able to post a reply till this morn--some kind of software problem since the upgrade I have been told. I'm really glad I found this forum because I realized I don't know as much about SERTs as I thought.
I am a web designer and just wanted to say I have managed to get all my sites into Google and most of them get the #1 postion or at least on the first page for their top keywords.
I pay particular attention to the meta tag keywords and description but I also make sure every keyword can be found in the text of the page.
However one thing I haven't seen mentioned here, which I recently started doing, is researching the top keywords to see which are being searched for, i.e., "sell horses" gets lots less hits than "horses for sale" so I use the later.
I'm not sure why Google likes my sites but I generally get my sites approved by ODP and Yahoo by sticking to their rules. I figure if you can get into through those two doors your on the road.
