Hey Meta Tag Experts - Here's one for you...

Okay so you've got the standard Title, Description, and Keyword meta tags.

What about all the other tags? One of my sites has the below list of tags. Its done fine SEO-wise. #4 out of 46 million sites for our key phrase. But we were that way before I put these in.

Should I have all these? Whats your opinion?

<title>Web Page Title Here</title>
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOODP" />
<meta name="GOOGLEBOT" content="NOODP" />
<meta name="description" content="Description" />
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword,keyword,keyword,keyword" />
<meta name="rating" content="General" />
<meta name="MS.LOCALE" content="EN-US" />
<meta name="CATEGORY" content="home page" />
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow" />
<meta http-equiv="Classification" content="Health" />
<meta name="URL" content="http://www.domain.com" />

 

By the way the NOODP is mandatory. If you don't know why, you better read up on it. Its a total GODSEND.

 

I would dump all tags except for title and description. IMO keywords has no use anymore also you should fix your description tag so it reads more like a description of your site and less like spammy keyword stuffing.

 

I agree... you don't need all that.....Thats way over board dude

 

With Shoe here.....

There are only 2 worth much of anything... TITLE (which isn't a meta actually) and the META_DESCRIPTION

The rest are bunk

 

the only ones i use are the ones in bold, the rest seem useless

 

Watch out for <meta name="MS.LOCALE" content="EN-US" /> , bots do not like ms.something sort of tags.

 

Please tell me you guys are aware of the insane importance of the NOODP tags?

 

We have no sites in the ODP - so they mean nada 2 me

 

ha ha ha ha lol........means nothing to me either....I'm curious to know what you think is so insanely important about that tag

 

Cmon. Seriously?

My site is over 7 years old, and adding this tag significantly increased our traffic.

the ODP had so many *non descript*, outdated, poorly written, lame tags for us that literally hundreds of pages were poorly displayed in search results on Google.

About 6 months to a year ago Google's index of our site changed from reading our Title tags and descriptions in our code, to reverting completely to ODP's title tags and descriptions. Our traffic took an immediate dive.

Our title tag for our home page went from: "Condition Phrase - Find out how you can treat your Condition today"

To this: "Condition Phrase"

We are ranked # 3 out of 46 million search results, and still the traffic died.

Finally I read about NOODP tag and implemented them. As you should know, they force search engines to actually read and display your meta title and description, rather than replace it with ODP's.

After three months of ODP forcing our Title tags not to appear properly on Google (or rather, Google using ODP for some reason, out of the blue), it not only fixed our home page but hundreds of pages that had been displaying as ODP tags for years without me even knowing it. Complete with logical, interesting title tags and descriptions, traffic poured back into the site.

Its funny you respond with a rather ignorant "Ha ha ha ha lol" at this.

Here is an educated explanation:

searchrank.com/blog/2006/10/yahoo-supports-noodp-tag.html#more

"What is the big deal [with ODP tags] anyway? Well for starters, Open Directory descriptions for sites are usually written as a third party review of what the site itself offers as opposed to a more informative description describing the company, product and/or service. Also a Open Directory listing may be out of date or just plain incorrect and trying to get ODP editors to change an old listing is next to impossible. Therefore, many webmasters want more control over how their pages are displayed in the organic search results of search engines. Support for the NOODP tag gives them just that."

 

Well 'ha ha ha' on you. All I was saying we don't utilize that particular resource. I am happy you are enjoying benfits from said resource...

There is still no magic there for me. That's ok right?

 

I only use the below

<title>my title here</title>
<!-- larger description -->
<meta name="keywords" content="keywords">
<meta name="description" content="my description.">

 

I was responding to "OSEYMOURS" rather peculiar "ha ha ha" comment. Not yours.

In any case, NOODP seems like a Godsend to me.

That is, assuming, webmasters actually want to control how their pages appear on search engines.

If you don't care, then NOODP wont matter to you.

If you do care, then NOODP is very valuable.

After all, do you really want someone else writing your title tags and descriptions for you?

I don't.

 

Well 'ha ha ha' on me all over again....

Luv N Peace brutha - rep sent

 

One that is not there and should be is ...

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />

HTML:

This tag...

<meta name="robots" content="index,follow" />

HTML:

According to the webmasters guide, last I checked, should only be used for exclusion. Inclusion is implicit.

 

What about my website? Does my meta need cleaning out? If so what should i keep and what should i remove. I don't want to remove something that will cause trouble to my site.
Many thanks

 

i would remove

if they are the kind of keywords you are aiming to rank for

 

Are all the others okay? Is there any i need to add?

 

Maybe I'm wrong here, but I vaguely remember something about Adsense, YPN using the keywords meta tag in helping determine what ads are shown; as well as Yahoo stating they still use Keywords in their ranking process although it's a small factor.