Importance of Meta Tags Optimization In this article, we simply
talk about what Meta Tags are, their importance, the important
Meta Tags and useful tips on how to optimize your Meta Tags for
a better ranking with the search engines. "Meta Tag Optimization
is an important aspect of your site optimization process.
Careful handling can get you great Ranking Results " What are
Meta Tags?
Meta Tags are the information inserted in the <head> area of the
HTML code of your web pages, where apart from the Title Tag,
other information inserted is not visible to the person surfing
your web page but is intended for the search engine crawlers.
Meta Tags are included so that the search engines are able to
list your site in their indexes more accurately.
Using Meta Tags in HTML is not necessary while making your web
pages. There are many websites that don’t feel the requirement
to use Meta Tags at all. In short Meta information is used to
communicate information to the search engine crawlers that a
human visitor may not be concerned with. Infoseek and AltaVista
were the first major crawler based search engines to support
Meta keywords Tag in 1996. Inktomi and Lycos too followed
thereafter.
Why are Meta Tags used?
Meta Tags were originally designed to provide webmasters with a
way to help search engines know what their site was about. This
in turn helped the search engines decide how to rank the sites
in their search results. Making Meta Tags is a simple process.
As the competition increased, webmasters started manipulating
this tool through spamming of keywords. In turn most search
engines withdrew their support to Meta keywords Tag, which
included Lycos and AltaVista. From being considered as one of
the most reliable and important tool, Meta Tags are now often
abused. In the present day scenario a vital feature that the
Meta Tags provide to the websites is the ability to control, to
a certain extent, how some search engines describe its web
pages. Apart from this, Meta Tags also offer the ability to
specify that a certain website page should not be indexed.
Using Meta Tags, however, provides no guarantee that your
website page would rank highly in the search engine rankings.
Due to the rampant abuse and manipulation of the Meta keywords
Tag by webmasters, most search engines don't support it anymore.
Types of Meta Tags
The more important Meta Tags are discussed below in detail.
The Title Tag
The Title Tag is not a Meta Tag. However, since it’s a very
important Tag, we thought it necessary to discuss it here. The
Title Tag is an HTML code that shows the words that appear at
the top title bar of your browser. The Title Tag is not
displayed anywhere else on the page. It is these words or phrase
that appear as the title of your page in the hyperlink listings
on the search engine results.
The users in-turn click on this hyperlink to go to your website
from Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Therefore, the
significance of the Title Tag is evident as all search engines
use the Title Tag to gather information about your site.
The Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description Tag is an HTML code that allows you to give
a short and concise summary of your web page content. The words
placed in this Meta Tag, are often used in the SERP, just below
the Title Tag as a brief description of your page. In the Search
Engine Results Pages, after reading the Title of the page, a
user goes through the description of the page and decides
whether she wants to go to your site or not. It is therefore
important that your Meta Description Tag is nicely composed
describing your page offering while enticing the user to click
on your listing.
The Meta Keywords Tag
Most search engines do not read the Meta Keywords Tag anymore.
It is okay to ignore the Meta Keywords Tags. However, if you
feel more comfortable using it, you can have about 15 important
non-repetitive keywords in this Tag, separated by commas.
Meta Robots Tag
The Meta Robots Tag gives you the ability to specify whether
search engines should index that page or follow the links
appearing on that page. However, there is no need for using Meta
Robots tag if one is already using detailed robots.txt file to
block any specific indexing.
The various commands used under Meta Robots Tag are: Index:
allows the spider to index that page.
Noindex: instructs the spider not to index the page.
Follow: instructs the spider to follow the links from that page
and index them.
Nofollow: instructs the spider not to follow links from that
page for indexing.
<HEAD> <meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> <meta
name="robots" content="noindex,follow"> <meta name="robots"
content="index,nofollow"> <meta name="robots"
content="noindex,nofollow"> </HEAD>
Note: Use only one of the above given commands.
If you have not specified any Meta Robots Tag on a page, by
default, the spiders understand that the page and all the links
appearing on that page are open for indexing. Therefore, it
makes more sense to use this Meta Tag in case you don’t want
certain parts of your web page indexed.
talk about what Meta Tags are, their importance, the important
Meta Tags and useful tips on how to optimize your Meta Tags for
a better ranking with the search engines. "Meta Tag Optimization
is an important aspect of your site optimization process.
Careful handling can get you great Ranking Results " What are
Meta Tags?
Meta Tags are the information inserted in the <head> area of the
HTML code of your web pages, where apart from the Title Tag,
other information inserted is not visible to the person surfing
your web page but is intended for the search engine crawlers.
Meta Tags are included so that the search engines are able to
list your site in their indexes more accurately.
Using Meta Tags in HTML is not necessary while making your web
pages. There are many websites that don’t feel the requirement
to use Meta Tags at all. In short Meta information is used to
communicate information to the search engine crawlers that a
human visitor may not be concerned with. Infoseek and AltaVista
were the first major crawler based search engines to support
Meta keywords Tag in 1996. Inktomi and Lycos too followed
thereafter.
Why are Meta Tags used?
Meta Tags were originally designed to provide webmasters with a
way to help search engines know what their site was about. This
in turn helped the search engines decide how to rank the sites
in their search results. Making Meta Tags is a simple process.
As the competition increased, webmasters started manipulating
this tool through spamming of keywords. In turn most search
engines withdrew their support to Meta keywords Tag, which
included Lycos and AltaVista. From being considered as one of
the most reliable and important tool, Meta Tags are now often
abused. In the present day scenario a vital feature that the
Meta Tags provide to the websites is the ability to control, to
a certain extent, how some search engines describe its web
pages. Apart from this, Meta Tags also offer the ability to
specify that a certain website page should not be indexed.
Using Meta Tags, however, provides no guarantee that your
website page would rank highly in the search engine rankings.
Due to the rampant abuse and manipulation of the Meta keywords
Tag by webmasters, most search engines don't support it anymore.
Types of Meta Tags
The more important Meta Tags are discussed below in detail.
The Title Tag
The Title Tag is not a Meta Tag. However, since it’s a very
important Tag, we thought it necessary to discuss it here. The
Title Tag is an HTML code that shows the words that appear at
the top title bar of your browser. The Title Tag is not
displayed anywhere else on the page. It is these words or phrase
that appear as the title of your page in the hyperlink listings
on the search engine results.
The users in-turn click on this hyperlink to go to your website
from Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Therefore, the
significance of the Title Tag is evident as all search engines
use the Title Tag to gather information about your site.
The Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description Tag is an HTML code that allows you to give
a short and concise summary of your web page content. The words
placed in this Meta Tag, are often used in the SERP, just below
the Title Tag as a brief description of your page. In the Search
Engine Results Pages, after reading the Title of the page, a
user goes through the description of the page and decides
whether she wants to go to your site or not. It is therefore
important that your Meta Description Tag is nicely composed
describing your page offering while enticing the user to click
on your listing.
The Meta Keywords Tag
Most search engines do not read the Meta Keywords Tag anymore.
It is okay to ignore the Meta Keywords Tags. However, if you
feel more comfortable using it, you can have about 15 important
non-repetitive keywords in this Tag, separated by commas.
Meta Robots Tag
The Meta Robots Tag gives you the ability to specify whether
search engines should index that page or follow the links
appearing on that page. However, there is no need for using Meta
Robots tag if one is already using detailed robots.txt file to
block any specific indexing.
The various commands used under Meta Robots Tag are: Index:
allows the spider to index that page.
Noindex: instructs the spider not to index the page.
Follow: instructs the spider to follow the links from that page
and index them.
Nofollow: instructs the spider not to follow links from that
page for indexing.
<HEAD> <meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> <meta
name="robots" content="noindex,follow"> <meta name="robots"
content="index,nofollow"> <meta name="robots"
content="noindex,nofollow"> </HEAD>
Note: Use only one of the above given commands.
If you have not specified any Meta Robots Tag on a page, by
default, the spiders understand that the page and all the links
appearing on that page are open for indexing. Therefore, it
makes more sense to use this Meta Tag in case you don’t want
certain parts of your web page indexed.
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