Meta Tag Stress

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Meta Tag Stress

Meta Tags

curlykarl

5:25 pm on Aug 11, 2002 (gmt 0)

Hi All

This is my first posting, I am still a bit of an internet virgin. I have been looking everywhere for help with meta tags but everyone seems to have a different view on them. I was wondering if you could have a look at mine and see if they are ok?

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Page Title</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="A little bit about my site
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="car spares,auto parts,Autospares,Parts,Dephi,Lockheed,Multi Media,Transmission,C.V Joints,Driveshafts,Borg & beck,Kayaba,shock absorbers,Timax,exhausts">
<META NAME="author" CONTENT="my name">
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="index,follow">
<META NAME="distribution" CONTENT="Global">
<META NAME="revisit-after" CONTENT="4 weeks">
</HEAD>

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks

CurlyKarl

pageoneresults

5:47 pm on Aug 11, 2002 (gmt 0)

Hello curlykarl, welcome to Webmaster World!

The <title> is not a meta and is referred to as the Title Element. I would trim the above tags down to...

<html>
<head>
<title>Page Title</title>
<meta name="description" content="A little bit about my site.">
(You are missing the ."> at the end of your description meta.
<meta name="keywords" content="car spares,auto parts,Autospares,Parts,Dephi,Lockheed,Multi Media,Transmission,C.V Joints,Driveshafts,Borg & beck,Kayaba,shock absorbers,Timax,exhausts">
</head>

Note: For the keywords tag, first order of keyword phrases should come from your title, then description, and then your first two paragraphs on the page.

rewboss

7:43 pm on Aug 11, 2002 (gmt 0)

Actually, although <title> is not a <meta> tag, it is, strictly speaking, meta. "Meta" is short for "metainformation", which translates as "information about information". Your webpage is information; <title> and <meta> tags give information about your webpage.

By that definition, certain <meta> tags (such as the "meta refresh") are not, strictly speaking, meta. It's a strange, confusing world, but there it is.

richlowe

4:47 am on Aug 12, 2002 (gmt 0)

I would reduce these to:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Page Title</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="A little bit about my site
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="car spares,auto parts,Autospares,Parts,Dephi,Lockheed,Multi Media,Transmission,C.V Joints,Driveshafts,Borg & beck,Kayaba,shock absorbers,Timax,exhausts">
<META NAME="author" CONTENT="my name">
</HEAD>

I just like the "author" tag. The other tags are not necessary.

Richard Lowe

rewboss

6:46 am on Aug 12, 2002 (gmt 0)

If you include <meta name="reply-to" content="your.email@address.com" /> you get e-mails from people (actually bots) telling you they "found your site and noticed it's not showing up in some search engine inquiries" and they can fix that if you pay them lots of money. :)

Sinner_G

7:03 am on Aug 12, 2002 (gmt 0)

I have seen language dependent keyword tags on some sites, like this:

Is it worth anything, for example on the default page of a multilingual site?

ukgimp

8:07 am on Aug 12, 2002 (gmt 0)

Is it worth anything, for example on the default page of a multilingual site?

I would not have thought so inless you had instances of that word within the index page. It would be better to have the keywords specific to the particular language section. It seemed to work OK for me when I did the same, although metas dont have the same usfulness they one did.

Cheers

Sinner_G

8:25 am on Aug 12, 2002 (gmt 0)

It would be better to have the keywords specific to the particular language section.

Problem is, the whole site is dynamic, i.e. the content comes from a database, including the languages. I.e. there is only one (asp) page for all languages...

So I guess it doesn't help much, but is not harmful either?

ukgimp

8:33 am on Aug 12, 2002 (gmt 0)

Why not dynamic metas, titles etc for the different sections? That works for me, albeit not on the multigual site I mentioned in my last post, but worth consideration.

curlykarl

11:21 am on Aug 12, 2002 (gmt 0)

Thanks very much for your input, I have one further question though.

What about the robots section, I was under the impression it was a required tag ?

Index, Follow
Indexall ??

Thanks

CurlyKarl

Sinner_G

11:26 am on Aug 12, 2002 (gmt 0)

No, basically a robot will index your pages unless you tell it otherwise.

ScottM

11:27 am on Aug 12, 2002 (gmt 0)

I don't have a robots tag on any of my websites...none. It is not required. THey do well in the search engines.

ukgimp

11:32 am on Aug 12, 2002 (gmt 0)

Not really essential to have them. It only comes in to play when you dont want a page indexed for instance. There are a number of variations.

You can change the parameters, in the above case the page will be indexed and the links followed.

If you wanted to have the links followed but not have the page indexed you could use "noindex, follow". A site map would be a good scenario for this.

If you want to control where spiders can crawl in a bit more detail you will need to create a robots.txt file. There are loads of discussions here on the subject

also [robotstxt.org...]

Cheers

curlykarl

12:03 pm on Aug 12, 2002 (gmt 0)

Thank you all for your help

Regards

CurlyKarl

rewboss

3:35 pm on Aug 13, 2002 (gmt 0)

Note that not all spiders take much notice of a meta robots tag, and some of the nasty ones ignore robots.txt, too.

Meta Tag Stress

Meta Tags

curlykarl

pageoneresults

rewboss

richlowe

rewboss

Sinner_G

ukgimp

Sinner_G

ukgimp

curlykarl

Sinner_G

ScottM

ukgimp

curlykarl

rewboss

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