Well, for starters the only META tag you should be worrying about is the description. The others are pretty much pointless from an SEO point of view. That being said, there are other tags you should be aware of. I'll list them below, and show how they're used. <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> <meta name="description" content=""> <meta name="keywords" content=""> </head> Code (markup): The first META tag is required. It states what character encoding the Web page was saved with. I prefer UTF-8, though for many Western European language pages (that includes English of course), ISO-8859-1 is usually sufficient. This META tag must match the actual file encoding the page was saved with, and that in turn must match the character encoding sent out by the Web server. If they don't all match up, bad things can happen - usually resulting in your Web page's content looking like a bunch of unreadable jibberish. The second one is optional, and is only used if you have embedded or inlined CSS code. It basically says that the content type for those embedded and inlined styles is CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). If your page doesn't have any (for instance you use an external style sheet linked to the page via the LINK element), then don't use this. It's that simple. The third is the META description tag. You have 160 characters to play with here (including spaces), so make them count. This tag won't affect your search rankings, but Google and the other search engines will highlight the keywords in the description if they match the keywords used in a search and the description gets included in the search results (which it doesn't always do). The best way to write a META description is to compose a clear, accurate, concise and descriptive summary of the current Web page while also compelling the reader to "click that link" (instead of the other links in the SERPs). If you can make it match, compliment and reinforce the page title, so much the better. One good (or dare I say great) example is the META description for ShrinkFile.net (I actually wrote it for another DPer). Go check it out some time. The last one is the META keywords tag. The search engines don't use this anymore, though some of the metacrawlers (like Dogpile) still do, but it's not like their search results mean anything these days anyway. Just put the keywords you're using on the current page here and forget about them. At best, they'll just provide you with a reminder of what keywords you're targeting on a given page. At worst, it'll tell your competitors what search terms you're optimizing your page for. Once these META tags are in place, write your TITLE tags into the code. Not only will the user agent (browser, search engine spider, etc) already know what character encoding is used for the Web page, but you won't have to worry about some of the nastier side effects that come with the territory if you fail to heed my advice. You have 60 characters (including spaces) to work with, so write the best title you possibly can (and don't double up on your keywords either). Here's what the code should look like at this point (I'm using HTML 4.01 Strict here). <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> <meta name="description" content="A brief 160 character (including spaces) description of the current page goes here."> <meta name="keywords" content="current, page, keywords, go, here, only, once, page, content, has, been, finished"> <title>Web Page Title | Site Title</title> </head> Code (markup): Last but not least, don't spend more than 5-10 minutes worrying about your META tags. You have much more important things to focus your attention on.
Rally now no value for metatag since 3 yrs. Bcz allSEs are considering it but lots off spammers kills the metatag. Now only description which can shown in the SERP with the page link
Only three things is important for meta tag and that is Title, Description and Keywords and It should be unique for every page. Then you can get more benefit from search engine side.
Great article Dan. However, some pre-made websites - such as GO-DADDY provides the bulk meta tag info build in. This makes it extremely easy to capture content back to your website without displaying a web-link/page. Hey! Question for you folks? Ever try to capture the worlds longest single page? It's about 1 1/2 miles long.
The most important meta tag attributes in a site are Description and Keywords. It is given special importance by the Google for its Ranking purpose. If the keywords and description are synchronized well with the site content then your site has all chances of getting good rank in Google.
Meta tags has a great effect in seo, your meta title, description and meta keywords should be symetric.
Get your keyword phrase into the description at least once, Google bolds it in their SERP's. I would also do this in the title as well. Try to entice the visitor to click on your listing. I've seen so many results in the SERP's with titles and descriptions that don't make me want to click. As much as possible it should be almost a classified ad with your keywords.
Opinion. The truth is that this is one of those debated definitions like SEM (Is it another word for PPC or is it the parent of PPC & SEO? Not everyone agrees). Meta data is "data about data". In this case, it's data about your web page. Even though the <title> tag is data about your web page, not everyone agrees that it is a "Meta tag". Some feel if the tag is not explicitly named "meta", then it's not a meta tag. ...I am not of that school. It's a tag and it contains meta data.