Importance of Meta Tags in the present day context and their optimization
Written within the header tags of a webpage, Meta tags are meant to carry information specifically for agents like browsers, search bots and are not seen anywhere within the webpage.
In the present context, it is quite hard to figure out the part played by Meta tags in optimizing a website for search engines. This is because many search engines like Google tend to ignore them or give less or no importance to them whereas some other search engines like Yahoo! seem to give them some level of importance.
Types of Meta Tags and their functions
Basically there are two major types of Meta tags.
1.) META tags: HTTP-EQUIV
2.) Meta tags that make use of a Name Attribute
META tags with a NAME attribute are META types that do not correspond to HTTP headers whereas META HTTP-EQUIV tags are the equivalent of HTTP headers (HTTP headers contain important data that helps a program in making sense out of a web based message).
Meta tags and search engine optimization
Though major search engines like Google do not provide much importance to Meta tags, there are some medium level search engines that do. This is why it is always better to optimize Meta tags. Basically of all the Meta tags the two primary tags that play a role in optimization are the Meta Keywords tag and the Meta description tag.
Optimizing Meta Keywords tag
The Meta keywords tag basically contains a list of keywords which are specific to a webpage. There was a time when the internet was developing and the Meta keywords tag was given much importance. But currently no major search engine including yahoo!, google and MSN gives any importance to these keywords. But there are some secondary search engines which still consider them important in their ranking algorithm.
Basically the Meta keywords tag is written as follows:
< META NAME=“keywords” CONTENT=“keyword 1, keyword 2……keyword 3” >
Optimizing Meta Description tag
The Meta description tag contains a brief and concise description or summery of the webpage's content. Though not many search engines place much importance to the Meta Description tag they still do carry some minor value and hence should not be avoided. Some search engines tend to display the Meta Description in their search results page and hence making use of appealing and attention driving descriptions can help improve the click through rates. The description can use keywords and should be clear and concise. Writing Meta descriptions that run into pages is not advisable as that defeats the actual meaning of writing a description. The Meta description tag is particularly important if the content of a webpage is very little. Anything within 200 characters should do just fine.
Basically the Meta Description tag assumes the following form:
< META NAME=“description” CONTENT=“Find out what are Meta tags and how to optimize them?”>
(It should be noted that both the Meta Description tag and the Meta Keywords tag are specific to a particular webpage.)
Other types of Meta Tags
In addition to the Meta Description and keyword tag there are many other Meta tags that are very useful though not in the search engine optimization point of view. These Meta Tags are used to give special instructions to search bots or browsers on how to display a page. Some of these Meta Tags have been discussed below.
Meta Expires tag
The Meta Expires tag is used to tell the browser the date and time when a document can be considered expired. Most search engines remove expired documents from their search databases.
A Meta expires tag assumes the following format:
< META HTTP-EQUIV=“expires” CONTENT=“Thu, 26 Jan 2004 09:26:60 GMT” >
Meta Refresh Tag
A Meta refresh tag is used to tell the browser when to reload a document automatically. Such a tag can be used by web pages that constantly update content like news sites or live commentary sites.
The Meta Refresh Tag assumes the following format:
< META HTTP-EQUIV=“Refresh” CONTENT=“4” >
Using the above Meta refresh tag will automatically refresh the page after every four seconds.
Meta Pragma tag
The Meta Pragma tag is used to cache the page to control browser caching. Using a 'no-cache' in the Pragma tag will prevent web browsers from caching the page.
The Meta Pragma Tag assumes the following form:
< META HTTP-EQUIV=“Pragma” CONTENT=“no-cache” >
No ARCHIVE Tag
The no achieve tag can be used to keep search bots like Google and Yahoo! from displaying a cached version of the page on their search results.
The No Archive tag assumes the following form
< META NAME=“googlebot” CONTENT=“No Archive” >
Meta Robots Tag
The Meta Robots tag is specially meant to control robots that visit web pages. A Meta robot tag is page specific and does not apply to the entire website.
The Meta robots tag assumes the following form:
< META NAME=“ROBOTS” CONTENT=“INDEX, FOLLOW” >
The above Meta tag instructs the robots to index the page and follow the links present on that page. Making use of NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW in the above will instruct robots not to cache the page and not to follow the links on that page. Similarly a INDEX, NOFOLLOW tells the robot to cache the page but not to follow any links and a NOINDEX, FOLLOW tells a web page to follow the links but not to cache the page.
In a similar way using NOIMAGEINDEX in the content section of the tag instructs the robots not to index any images on the page and using NOIMAGECLICK prevents robots from following any link present on the image.
There are many SEO companies today that offer meta tags optimization services. In addition there are some meta tag generate and meta tag checker software programs that can help you develop highly targeted html meta tags for your website.
Ed Kundahl
IdeaOverTen
