What meta tags should be used? [Archive] - SEO Best Practices Search Engine Forums

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ndfox

29-04-2003, 21:47/09:47PM

I have found this forum interesting and very polite, (that is very much appreciated). Most places with interactivity seem to grow towards anger and flaming. I don't think I have seen any of that here!

Are there any meta tags other then description and robots that should be used? I have seen people use "revisit after" and many others but it seems that nobody here is to concerned about them. What is the proper use of "robots"?

There is alot of conversation about what is proper and what can get get you punished by google. I see many sites that seem to bend or even break the rules and they do great all the time. As far as I can tell never get punished. I don't think they implore most of the activities people here endorse. For example this site http://www.plastic-surgery.tv has virtually no content but lots of links. Is this a reasonable site for me to emulate?

Thank You

[Moved from Google forum to here. Please read this (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7575) for further clarification. - Jill]

Advisor

29-04-2003, 21:56/09:56PM

The Title tag (not a Meta tag) is the most important. Be sure to use one that is keyword-rich.

As long as you're not trying to trick the search engines, you don't need to worry about getting punished by Google or any of them. Just make your site the best it can be!

Don't worry about what the other sites are doing.

Jill

ihelpyou

29-04-2003, 22:07/10:07PM

Welcome to the forums ndfox! :hi:

Well then, you have not seen me in action as of yet. :D

landmark

30-04-2003, 03:33/03:33AM

I have found this forum interesting and very polite, (that is very much appreciated). Most places with interactivity seem to grow towards anger and flaming. I don't think I have seen any of that here!

Look in the archives - it's ugly in there!

Are there any meta tags other then description and robots that should be used?

Keywords (used by Inktomi).

g1smd

30-04-2003, 14:39/02:39PM

Code on each page begins:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title> Your Title Here </title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="EN-GB">
<meta name="Keywords" content=" your, keyword, list, here ">
<meta name="Description" content=" Your Description Here. ">
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
</head>

Of the en-gb part, the first two letters come from the code list in ISO 639 and the last two letters come from the code list in ISO 3166.

See also ISO 4217 for codes for representing currency, and then ISO 8601 for formats for date and time.

Code within the page:

I use: <a href="somepage.html" title="some text here"></a> for links.

I use <img src="somefile.png" alt="some text"> for images.

Headings are done with <hx></hx> tags, properly used from <h1></h1> downwards.

I aim for several keywords per page, and optimise each page, title, description, etc, individually per page for those.

rockynate

30-04-2003, 15:42/03:42PM

From what I've seen, just about everyone around here agrees on at least including a description and keywords meta tag (and, of course, the title). The effort you spend on them is another story...

The robots.txt file is used for giving specific instructions to spiders that visit your site - like "don't index these pages" and such. Unless you have unique needs, it isn't necessary, IMO.

As for being "punished" by Google - I certainly don't look at removal from Google as "punishment". They simply must remove sites that violate their terms of service, otherwise their results will be full of spam. No punishment, just cleaning.

Sites that do so are definitely removed. I have several first-hand experiences to go by! (I got some VERY bad advice early on in my SEO days). The reason that everyone is always talking about the spammers being successful, and not being punished, is because that's all anyone around here sees - the few spammers that are successfully ranked in the index. They don't have a public dustbin of sites that have been trashed for everyone to view.

And that's the way it should be. If the members of this forum were to be discussing the latest of their sites to get removed, this would be a very different type of forum - a forum of dishonest SED's. (Search Engine Deceivers)

Dom99

01-05-2003, 05:39/05:39AM

Well, I have seen many doorway pages on google and other things they say are in breach of their T&C's and I do try to do my bit and let them know, but they have never, ever done anything about it, so I think I won't waste my breath in future!

dabblingmum

01-05-2003, 21:56/09:56PM

what does this one mean?

<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">

I dont think I have seen it before

thanks!

Kal

01-05-2003, 22:18/10:18PM

Hi dm :hi:

I use that tag on all my sites and my client's sites. It prevents those horrible Smart Tags from Microsoft from impacting your site pages.

I'm not 100 percent sure of the whole story but here's my take and others can correct me: MS introduced Smart Tags into the XP version of their software (although I think they withdrew them again didn't they??). Anyway, when someone has XP installed on their system, what these tags do is create automatic links within the IE browser on any site the user is looking at.

So if you are looking at a web site about travel to Canada and you have the XP software installed, you might see underlined keywords within the web page that the site owner never placed there. These underlined keywords are actually links to competing travel sites relating to those keywords, based on advertising deals set up between MS and the 3rd party sites.

Naturally, web site owners were horrified to learn that these Smart Tags could alter how their sites look and hijack their site visitors away and over to their competitors sites, from links embedded within their own sites! So this tag provides an "opt-out". Using this tag in your HTML code apparently prevents Smart Tags from appearing within your site.

Anyone have any more recent info on the Smart Tag debate?

scottiecl

01-05-2003, 22:32/10:32PM

Hi ndfox! :hi:

Welcome to the forum!

Originally posted by ndfox
What is the proper use of "robots"? If you don't want to exclude any robots from crawling your site, create a blank file in Notepad, save it as robots.txt , and put it in the root directory for your site. If you do want to exclude certain spiders, do a search here for more specifics.
Originally posted by ndfox
I see many sites that seem to bend or even break the rules and they do great all the time. As far as I can tell never get punished.
They may not get punished today, but they are probably on borrowed time. Google can't take action against some forms of spam without taking out many innocent sites that use the method legitimately- most spam techniques twist perfectly valid structure and use them to deceive.
Originally posted by ndfox
For example this site http://www.plastic-surgery.tv has virtually no content but lots of links. Is this a reasonable site for me to emulate? If you can get tons of incoming links, that will offset a lack of content or other optimization techniques. Unless the links are not legitimate (link farms, bogus sites created strictly for link pop, closed loops of minisites) there is nothing spammy about a site ranking well because it has lots of incoming links. It is hard to get a lot of incoming links unless your site is really good, so the best way is to start by building a great site and optimizing it well.

Kal- I had not heard about smart tags before- is there another thread here where that was discussed? Did M$ buy Ezula and I missed it? Incredible...

Advisor

01-05-2003, 22:36/10:36PM

I believe that the whole smart tag thing was dropped by MS after the outcry when it was first announced (a long time ago now).

I keep the tags on my site in case it's ever revisited though.

Jill

Dan0

02-05-2003, 00:17/12:17AM

Originally posted by rockynate
From what I've seen, just about everyone around here agrees on at least including a description and keywords meta tag (and, of course, the title). The effort you spend on them is another story...
I agree that the META 'description' can be important because some search engines will use it in your listing, and that you need to use the TITLE properly, but I don't believe that META tags are critical to attaining good rankings.

I get a lot of questions from people who want to know how they can get 'top ranking META tags,' etc. Some of them want to know if this or that META tag generator is worth the $50 some spammer wants to charge them. In the past, they didn't believe me when I told them to forget about it.

In order to save these people from wasting their time and money, I am running my entire content portal (Inside Out Marketing) with no META tags whatsoever, to prove the point. No META tags - none, nada, zippo, zilch. I get traffic for hundreds (soon it will be thousands) of search terms every month, and not just from Google.

This site also uses an H3 tag for the headings in the content area, and does not use any 'table tricks' to hide the fact that my navigation links are on the left hand side of the page. So far, dire consequences have not ensued, by my failure to use any 'tricks.'

I even got a fake doorway page (titled "doorway pages are stupid") into the top ten on Google for 'doorway pages,' with no stinking META tags. Title, Headings, Body Text, and Links... that's where my keywords go.

landmark

02-05-2003, 03:29/03:29AM

Dan0, Google doesn't read META keywords, but Inktomi does. If you care about Inktomi, then you should still use the META keywords tag.

Advisor

02-05-2003, 07:45/07:45AM

Originally posted by landmark
Dan0, Google doesn't read META keywords, but Inktomi does. If you care about Inktomi, then you should still use the META keywords tag. Landmark, yes, they read them, but it's barely a factor in how you'll get ranked. If you care about Inktomi it still doesn't matter if you use Meta tags. It only helps for obscure words and that sort of thing.

Hey Dan, try taking the H3 tag out and just making it bold and see if it makes a difference. I'm so curious for someone to test that out. Everyone always spouts off how important H tags are, and I'm leaning towards thinking it's another in a long line of myths. But since I've never tested it, I can't say. I do know that I've optimized tons of sites without any header tags because it didn't make sense to use them, and they have no problems with rankings.

Jill

Dan0

02-05-2003, 09:41/09:41AM

I love that idea, Jill, and I just might try it. I'll have to see if I can do that with just one section of the site. It would be pretty darned funny if it worked.

Advisor

02-05-2003, 09:44/09:44AM

I would be willing to bet money that it makes no difference to your rankings.

ndfox

02-05-2003, 13:02/01:02PM

Thank you everyone for your reply. It was great help and I have learned some new things as well thank you!!

Kal

02-05-2003, 21:38/09:38PM

Originally posted by scottiecl
Kal- I had not heard about smart tags before- is there another thread here where that was discussed? Did M$ buy Ezula and I missed it? Incredible... Yeah, it was pretty diabolical. I'm pretty sure you'll find some threads in here if you do a search for "Smart Tags".

I did think MS had phased them out or something, but like Jill, I am sceptical so keep the tags in the code just in case. One of my clients (whose site I hadn't touched for years) contacted me about 4 or 5 months ago asking me why his site suddenly had all these links in it to his competitor's site, thinking that I had done it! He had just upgraded his computer and software to XP. So I guess people using older versions of XP still see the tags by default or something. For that reason alone it's worth including the tags.

Bernard

02-05-2003, 21:54/09:54PM

Thanks Kal! I didn't know about that. I've already updated my pages.

Dan0

02-05-2003, 23:10/11:10PM

Just a quick note on Inktomi - yes, they do read META tags. Google fetches the full source code, so they could start playing with META tags any time they like, and they don't have to tell *us* about it. But search engines don't trust META tags.

In the case of Inside Out Marketing, the Inktomi-driven traffic is right in line with expectations, with no META tags.

The point of removing them wasn't to tell people "Don't Use META Tags." You should use them - they can't hurt anything, and they might give you a micro-boost somewhere.

The point of removing them was to have solid proof for the innocent newbies of the world that spammed-up META tags are not going to give you any help with your rankings at all. It would be nice to finally put the "META tag industry" out of its misery.

g1smd

04-05-2003, 20:58/08:58PM

>> I believe that the whole smart tag thing was dropped by MS after the outcry when it was first announced (a long time ago now). <<

It got dropped from the XP ; but I believe that someone "forgot" to remove all of it from some versions of Office XP.

I add this as well now:

<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no">

WebSavvy

04-05-2003, 21:04/09:04PM

I add this as well now:

<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no">

That tag is simply used to stop the dummy bar popup in IE6+ when your mouse cursor is over an image file on a webpage. It serves no other purpose.

I have that same tag on my pages also. I also have it in the meta tag generator I wrote last year.