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Meta tags are the beginning of most SEO training, for better and worse. I contemplated on how to introduce this topic because we always hear the bad part of meta tags, namely the keywords meta tag. One of the first things dissected in any site review is the misuse of meta tags, mainly because they are at the top of every page in the header, therefore the first thing seen. But we don’t want to get too negative, meta tags are some of the best tools in a search marketer’s repertoire.

There are more meta tags than just description and keywords, though those two are picked on the most. I’ve broken down the most used (in my experience) by the good, the bad and the indifferent. You’ll notice that the list gets longer as we get to the bad ones. I didn’t get to cover all of the meta tags possible to add, but there is a great Meta Tag resourceyou should check out if you’re interested in what is out there.

My main piece of advice is to stick to the core minimum, don’t add meta tags you don’t need as they just take up code space. The less code you have the better. Think about it like this, your page code is like a set of step by step directions to get somewhere, but for a browser. Extraneous meta tags are the annoying 200 feet line items in directions that tell you to stay on the same road you were on!

The Good Meta Tags

These are the meta tags that should be on every page, no matter what. Notice that this is a small list, these are the only two that are required, so if you can work with just these two, please do.

Meta Content Type – This tag is necessary to declare your character set for the page and should be present on every page. Leaving this out could impact how your page renders in the browser. A few options are listed below, but your web designer should know what is best for your site.

Meta Description – The infamous meta description tag is used for one major purpose, to describe the page to searchers as they read through SERPs. This tag does not influence ranking, but is very important regardless. It is your ad copy that will determine if the user clicks on your result. Keep it within 160 characters, and write it to get the user’s attention. Sell the page, get them to click on the result. Rand wrote a great article in 2007 on meta descriptions that goes more in detail.

Edited In: I left out the title tag as it doesn’t “start” with meta, but it is still technically a meta tag. You should always have a unique title tag on every page that describes the page. Check out this post for more information on title tags.

The Indifferent

Different sites will need to use these in specific circumstances, but if you can go without, please do.

Robots – One of the largest misconceptions is that you have to have a robots meta tag. Let’s make this clear: In terms of indexing and link following, if you don’t specify a meta robots tag, they read that as index,follow. It is only if you want to change one of those two commands that you need to add meta robots. Therefore, if you want to noindex but follow the links on the page, you would add the following tag with only the noindex, as the follow is implied. Only change what you want different than the norm.

Specific Bots(Googlebot) – These tags are used to give a specific bot instructions like noodp(forcing them not to use your DMOZ listing information) and noydir (same, instead the Yahoo Directory listing information). Generally the search engines are really good at this kind of thing, but if you think you need it, feel free. There have been some cases I’ve seen where it’s necessary, but if you must consider using the overall robots tag listed above.
Language – The only reason to use this tag is if you are moving internationally and need to declare the main language used on the page. Check out this meta languages resource for a full list of languages you can declare.
Geo – These meta tags, last I heard, are supported by Bing, but not Google (you can target to country inside Webmaster Tools). There are three kinds: placename, position (latitude and longitude) and region.

Source – The new kid on the block, this is a tag (really two tags) that Google is testing out (thanks to the tip from my coworker Justin Briggs). It’s mainly for news providers so that they can help the search engines understand who the original news source is and which ones are syndicates. The news world and search world are trying so very hard to get along, glad to see this one pop up.
Keywords – Yes, I put this on the indifferent because while no good SEO is going to recommend spending time on this tag, there is the small possibility it could help you somewhere. So please leave it out if you’re building a site, but if it’s automated there is no reason to take it out.

Refresh – This is the poor man’s redirect and really should not be used if at all possible. You should always use a server side 301 redirect. But I know that sometimes things need to happen now. But Google is NOT a fan.
Site Verification – Your site is verified with Google and Bing right? Who has the verification meta tags on their homepage? These are sometimes necessary because you can’t get the other forms of site verification loaded, but if at all possible try to verify another way. Google allows you to verify by DNS, external file, or by linking your Google Analytics account. Bing still only allows by XML file or meta tag, so go with the file if you can.

The Bad Meta Tags

There is nothing that will happen to your site if you use these, let me just make that clear. They are a waste of space though, even Google says so(and that was 5-6 years ago!). If you’re ready and willing, it might be time for some spring cleaning of your area.

Author/Web Author – This tag is used to name the author of the page. It’s just not necessary on the page.
Revisit After – This meta tag is a command to the robots to return to a page after a specific period of time. It’s not followed by any major search engine.
Rating – This tag is used to denote the maturity rating of content. I wrote a post about how to tag a page with adult images using a very confusing system that has since been updated (See the comments). It seems as if the best way to note bad images is to place them on a separate directory from other images on your site and alert Google.
Expiration/Date – Expiration is used to note when the page expires, and date is the date the page was made. Are any of your pages going to expire? Just remove them if they are (but please don’t, keep updating content, even contests, make it an annual contest!). And for date, make an XML sitemap and keep it up to date, that is so much more useful!
Copyright - That Google article debates with me here, but look at the footer of your site. I would guess it says “Copyright 20xx” in some form. Why say it twice?

Abstract - This tag is sometimes used to place an abstract of the content and used mainly by educational pursuits.
Distribution – The distribution value is supposedly used to control who can access the document, typically set to global. It’s inherent that if the page is open (not password protected like on an intranet) that it is for the world. Go with it, and leave the tag off the page.
Generator – This is used to note what program created the page. Like author, useless.
Cache Control - This tag is set in hopes of controlling when and how often a page is cached in the browser. It’s best to do this in the HTTP Header.
Resource Type – This is used to name the type of resource the page is, like “document.” Save yourself time, as the DTD declaration does it for you.

Stock Photo by Shutterstock

SEO meta descriptions, meta tag, page, title tags

One of the biggest problems with SEO is that you never know when someone is an SEO expert, or when theyre just making it up as they go. This is a problem because there are no formal qualifications with SEO. You dont need to pass any exams, or please any governing bodies, before you can offer your search engine optimisation services to the world, claiming yourself to be an SEO guru.

This is particularly problematic for small businesses, as theyre more likely to hire the services of one of the smaller breed of SEO companies who promise a personal service for less money even though they have no more knowledge of SEO than your average Facebook user.

In Ellesmere Port and the surrounding area for example there are a number of small SEO companies, all proclaiming to know the industry backwards and having years of experience, yet a look at some of the websites shows they dont. Rather than being experienced in the field of SEO they have instead learned their knowledge from forums and blogs, many of which are themselves full of half truths and myths.

What this meta tag is supposed to do is to tell the search engines to return to the website after 30 days in order to index it again, picking up any website updates. The 30 days can be changed to whatever number you wish, depending on how often you want Google and co to visit your website.

However, theres one small problem with this meta tag search engines have never used it, and we mean never.

Widely used SEO myth

You see, the met tag itself is a bit of a red herring, a joke on people who claim to know SEO if you will. It has never been used by Google, Yahoo or Bing and never will be. Instead, the met tag was invented by a Canadian based website called Vancouver Webpages and was used by their own local website called searchBC.

Even Vancouver Webpages doesnt use the tag anymore and, even if it did, it would only be relevant to websites listed with searchBC, located in British Columbia not Ellesmere Port, Cheshire.

Many websites claiming to offer SEO advice have posted about this tag, believing it to actually work. Here is a snippet from one such website spreading SEO myths:

The Revisit META tag defines how often a search engine or spider should come to your website for re-indexing. Often this tag is used for websites that change their content often and on a regular basis. This tag can also be beneficial in boosting your rankings if search engines display results based on the most recent submissions.

The Revisit META Tag is used by search engines as a means to indicate how often a web page should be revisited for re-indexing. This tag is supported by many search engines and should be made use of if your content changes on a regular basis.

This is of course utter nonsense, as the tag is not used, at all. Those people calling themselves SEO professionals who use this tag may even offer an excuse when confronted about saying that it cant hurt, and some search engines may use it in the future.

This again Im afraid is nonsense. By using the tag you are adding unnecessary code to your website, giving Google more code to scroll through and reducing the code-text ratio. Also, and most importantly, it will never be used. Why would Google return to a website to re-index it based on the content of a meta tag?

Think about it.

What does Google say about the meta name=revisit-after tag?

If you dont believe us, and some people reading this may not instead choosing to believe their friendly SEO expert who has never let them down before, then perhaps youll believe Google.

To our knowledge only one search engine has ever supported it, and that search engine was never widely used at this point, it is nothing more than a good luck charm. A remarkably widely used one. More pages use the completely worthless than use the element!

Now, if you see that code in your website as a result of SEO that has been done it shows that your SEO company is doing nothing more than groping around blindly in the dark.

This is one of a myriad of common errors and misconceptions spread by people who actually know nothing about SEO, they only think they do. Make sure when you let someone SEO your website that actually do know what theyre doing.

SEO Ellesmere Port, meta tag, search engine, SEO expert

Meta tag best practices are often disregarded by site owners seeking to optimize their sites. So much emphasis is placed on good content, proper promotion, and other such marketing and optimization techniques that some beginners with SEO and SEM may not even think about or understand their sites meta tags. Simply put, meta tags are a device for easier site indexing in the search engines, as well as another opportunity to give potential customers a snapshot of your site in the search engine results. In many cases, your sites description will be displayed in text results along with the site title, and if you havent set either then youll end up showing your customers only your URL and a related blurb from your content page. Setting your own meta tags is akin to landscaping your own storefrontthis isnt something you want done automatically, as it could be a deciding factor in whether or not you get targeted, valuable traffic to your site.

Clear and Concise

Titles and descriptions have to be kept relatively short, easy-to-read and, most importantly, highly relevant to your sites content. This is an area where you can work your keywords in, especially if theyve been well-selected for your topic, but its not the place to try to stuff in as many as you can. The last thing you want is for your potential customers to be greeted by nothing more than a nonsensical list of keywords that may or may not be directly related to their search. State your business name in the title of your home page and include your location if you want to optimize for your local area. The description should describe exactly what customers will find on your site, not merely which keywords you were attempting to optimize for or a very basic description of the type of business you have.

Eliminate Repeats

There is little benefit to your site if every single page title and description are exactly the same, or very similar. Search engine results will show whichever page of your site is most relevant to the search terms, so it only makes sense to diversify possible results by optimizing tags on each page for different keywordsnamely, whichever keywords are the most relevant to that particular page. Its much more valuable to show one page in each of 50 results than to have 50 pages show up in the results of one search especially since most of those will likely be hidden under omitted results

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SEO meta tag, search engine, search engine results, tag best practices