Meta Tags – the Definitive Guide

This is an explanation of all the meta tags I consider to be beneficial in one way or another.

Why do I think these could be beneficial? My research is based entirely on observations of successfully ranked sites in competitive areas. Feel free to submit others and I will add them in and link back to you.

Meta Description

The meta description tag should contain one or more sentences describing the page. Search Engines will display this under the Page Title, therefore it’s extremely important make it interesting to encourage potential visitors to click through.

Example:

<meta name=”description” content=”A description of your page goes in here.”>

Meta Keywords

Meta Keywords are also used by some Search Engines although they have been written of by most people,  it is still a worthwhile cause as it could count towards an overall page Quality Score in Google and older Search Engines still use them.

Example:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”Your phrase here, another phrase here” />

Meta Robots

This tells the Search Engines what it can and cannot do on a particular page.

This can be a very good one if used correctly even if others don’t say so. Its used throughout a few of my websites to ensure the Content gets indexed. This and the use of nofollows prevents Link Juice being passed to Tag Listings etc.  So on each “Post” every internal linked is nofollowed and on each Tag listing I use the Meta Robots tag like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow,noodp,noydir,noarchive” />

Meta Robots full list of Attributes:

• Index – Index this page please Googlebot (or other search engine).
• NoIndex – Don’t index this page Googlebot
• Follow – Follow all the links on this page
• NoFollow – Don’t follow anything on this page
• Noopd – Don’t use the description from the Open Directory Project (DMOZ)
• Noydir – Don’t use the description from the Yahoo Directory
• Noarchive – Don’t show a cache of this page please

Meta Distribution

This tells Google who your target audience is and would usually be set to Global.

Meta Distribution Attributes:

• Global is intended for all users.
• Local – for local IP block of your website
• IU – Internal Use Only not for public distribution

Example:

<meta name=”distribution” content=”Global” />

Meta Author

This should contain the owner/author of the page being displayed. It is an optional tag which you may or may not want to use. I will add that most SEO people seem to have it in their header, if they do it can’t be bad right?

Example:

<META NAME=”Author” CONTENT=”Anthony Shapley”>

Meta Generator

This is used to show what Content Management System is being used to Generate your website and is used by the software distributors to track the reach of their product. Whilst this is fine, I do highly encourage everyone to remove Version Numbers because if an exploit is found, it’s easy to work out if it applies to your website.

It makes no difference to your Search Results, you may or may not want to use it. Personally I would just remove it.

Example:

<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress 2.6.2” />