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Then while in another thread about this new penalty some one mentioned that haveing matching title and description tags may cause a down grade in your page.
I thought I knew the meta rules.
I always create a good title and repeat it in the DESCRIPTION tag and even the KEYWORD tag for good measure.
What meta tags matter to Google?
Should I not have the same info in all 3 tags?
Thanks!
haveing matching title and description tags may cause a down grade in your page
I don't think it causes a down grade but sometimes Google uses your description in the snipit and it's good to have something more describing the page there. Something to help get searchers to choose your page to visit. Google seems to use snipits of the description when words in the search phrase match words in the description.
Google don't even look at meta tags anymore. The only real important tag is still the TITLE tag: that one will really help you.
The description is important as it will write the snippet of text in the serps.
On rare occasions depending on the actual search.
I'm curious as to how many people scan the snippets and title compared to just clicking on the serps list starting at the top. I know I scan but I may be unusual.
Can somebody please give me an example of what i should include or to a site that will generate the tags for me (i think i recall some sites like that).
More importantly, where i my code do they go? (directly below <body>, <head>, etc)?
Thank you.
These go between the <head> tag
All are optional but Title, Keywords, Descriptions, Robots are mostly used.
I have NO meta tags at my site (not an optimization technique, just too much of a newbie to know).
Can somebody please give me an example of what i should include or to a site that will generate the tags for me (i think i recall some sites like that).
More importantly, where i my code do they go? (directly below <body>, <head>, etc)?
Meta tags go in the <head> section of the page. The should read as follows:
<meta name="description" content="put your description here">
<meta name="keywords" content="put your keywords here">
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
Each page should have a set of meta tags that reflect the page it is on. Do not use the same one for all your pages.
Is Inktomi's default still "index,no follow" if there is no tag?
Using a Robots Meta Tag [searchengineworld.com]
Is there a Golden-Rule or Fixed-Rule on the length of the following Tags:
- Title - I use maximun 60 characters
- Description I use maximun 200 characters
- Keywords - I use maximun 160 characters
Every tutorial and forum (even this forum) on the internet proposes different length for these 3 Tags.
Secondly some say separate keywords by "1 space", others say by "comma space" and still others say only a "comma".
Thanks and Regards
Sanuk
Also, in the past few months I've heard two different Google employees at two different conferences mention that Google DOES index the keywords meta tag. The Google algorithm does not currently give it much weight, if any at all, but they don't completely ignore it. They do collect the meta keywords data so they can do with as they will. And Google's will is always subject to change, as well we know.
I still use the keywords meta tag on every page. I currently use it as a handy "notepad" to remind myself what kw's I was targeting on that page. I do not agonize over what I put there, and I don't stuff it. But I'm not going to drop a practice that could be useful, even if only in a small way.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
The <title> is important.
You should define the Character encoding and the Content Language for the page, something like:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-gb">
I like to disable the IE toolbar thingy so next is:
<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no">
You need a description tag:
<meta name="Description" content="Nice site or page description goes here">
I still use Keywords although I know that very little uses them:
<meta name="Keywords" content="put all your keywords in a list">
I don't like the idea of smart tags, so bury it just in case the idea ever comes back:
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
The robots tag is added to pages that I don't want indexed or followed, but I know the default action is:
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
Hope that helps.
:-)
Some search engine articles on Robots Meta tag say the predefined defaults are INDEX and FOLLOW, not true with Inktomi. The default with Inktomi is index,nofollow.
That statement is a little off.
Inktomi says [inktomi.com]:
Following links: Slurp follows HREF links. It does not follow SRC links.Dynamic links: Slurp now has the ability to crawl dynamic links or dynamically generated documents. It will not, however, crawl them by default.
If your Web site is based on dynamic links and you want your site to appear in our search engine, one approach is to have some static pages which have links to your dynamic pages.
Remember the context of the thread is different but it still is a good read!
<meta name="country" content="">
seofreak,
I have never heard of this meta tag. Does Google or any other search engine really recognise it?
There are even more than these I belive! :)
No, google doesn't rely on them, but orthodox meta search engines do to some extent ..
<meta name="rating" CONTENT="General">
I very much suspect that the above is not useful for labelling content. The more appropriate (and slightly more complex) approach is to use the PICS Ratings System [directory.google.com].
