I was told that adding the following Meta -Tag will help my SEO page ranking in on Google. Is this true? <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en" /> If so then Great!! If not is there any other Meta-Tags which can be added to a site to help in SEO ranking? Thank you for your advise in Advance!!
about.com metatags I use : <meta name="Description" http-equiv="Description" content="yourdescription" /> <meta name="rating" http-equiv="rating" content="general" /> <meta name="Keywords" http-equiv="Keywords" content="yourkeywords" /> <meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache" /> <meta name="distribution" http-equiv="distribution" content="global" /> <meta name="robots" http-equiv="robots" content="index, follow" /> <meta name="content-type" http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; UTF-8" /> <meta name="revisit-after" http-equiv="revisit-after" content="1 week" /> <meta name="publisher" http-equiv="publisher" content="yourname" /> <meta name="author" http-equiv="author" content="yourname" /> <meta name="email" http-equiv="email" content="youremail@server.com" /> <meta name="country" http-equiv="country" content="yourcountry" /> <meta name="language" http-equiv="language" content="yourlanguagecode" /> geo-specs : might give you an advantage in local searches (now that is decided on the language code you use). <META NAME="geo.position" CONTENT="52.57;4.68"> <META NAME="geo.country" CONTENT="NL"> <META NAME="geo.region" CONTENT="NL-NH"> <META NAME="geo.placename" CONTENT="Limmen"> pick geo longitude latitude from google maps : zoom in on your home address and hover over the 'link' (top right corner), it holds the current LL data. You can also, if you are a business, register with Google with your local data. Once its validated you can add a description and some extra info which is show on the map dart, and you show up front page on area specific searches (where people query on city+keyword). Free ads.
juust has given you a great list, but it most be noted it's very unlikely the meta tags will help improve your ranking, they only help define what your website is about and help you to attract visitors by making a more eye catching listing. In the past, SE's used meta tags literally and would help rank your site above others that didn't. But people use them to manipulate rankings and so most SE's don't take them as seriously anymore, they turn to more reliable indicators of popularity such as links.
It is also important but if you are really concern of being ranked high, rather focus on the bigger fish....do link building instead
Here's the tags google considers - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=79812&query=meta+tags&topic=&type=
I agree. Nowadays, Google seems to have placed less importance towards meta-tags and more towards keyword content but there's still no harm to still use it anyway. After all, if one is aiming towards fully optimizing the site, every bit of small little things count.
The meta tags are almost useless when doing SEO for Google. However Yahoo seems to use them. Anyway, Description and Keywords should be more than enough. Do not make them too spammy.
Although there are many that can be use, most are not needed or helpful. I use the following: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <META http-equiv="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <title>Example Books - high-quality used books for children</title> <META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Author: A.N. Author, Illustrator: P. Picture, Category: Books, Price: £9.24, Length: 784 pages"> <META NAME="verify-v1" CONTENT="+nxGUDJ4QpAZ.............d1Nl23908vVuFHs34=" /> I have use almost everyone that is available, and there is no SEO advantage to them. But notice the use of the Hyphen (-) in the title and the use of the Colon )... Hummmm Do you think G just told you something?
The title tag, the meta keywords and description are important, but I don't know if I would add everything in post2 to every site. )
meta tags is just one of the more than a hundred factors in SEO. if i were you, don't spend much time on it. build good contents. get as many relevant backlinks as you can. have a well-structured, seo-friendly website and you are good to go.
I think the meta tag is a little helper than back link. But if you sure you complete in back link subject, the meta tag optimize is benefit.