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HTML Tip:
The Renewed Importance Of META Tags
by Larisa Thomason,
Senior Web Analyst,
NetMechanic, Inc.
META tags sure aren't what they used to be. Just a few years ago, good META description and keyword tags were a ticket to success for many sites — and many spammers. That was the problem: META tags were so easy to spam that they became almost useless.
But META tags are back — at least with some search engines. Depending on your site design and technology, good META tags may be one route to improved search engine rank.
META Tags For Safety And Security
Let's start with the less obvious ones that don't get as much attention as the DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS tags. Nonetheless, they help you control your site display and security.
- ROBOTS tag: Use this to invite search engine spiders into some parts of your site - and keep them out of others. The default action is index, follow. That tells the spider to index the page and follow all outbound links (both internal site links and links to external sites).
An example:
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
- Character Encoding: Avoid unexpected display problems by declaring the character encoding. That tells the browser which character set of letters to use. The A-Z alphabet, Hebrew characters, Japanese, Cryllic, or other set. This is particularly important when you're creating pages likely to be viewed by a diverse international audience!
An example:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
Note that this is a slightly different kind of META tag, an "http-equiv" tag. In some instances, it allows you to mimic http header data. Using this tag gives you more control about the page information that gets transmitted about the page.
Get more information about character encoding from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Recommendations.
- Language declaration: This identifies the human language (as opposed to code) used for the page content. Online translation tools use them to translate the page content. This is an important part of attracting an international audience and customers! Language declaration helps with other tasks too: accessibility, page rendering, font selection, and more.
An example of a page written in US English:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en">
Learn more about language declaration and the many language options available at the W3C Web site.
META Tags For Promotion
The previous tags help make your page display more reliably to international and visitors with disabilities. These next two are more commonly used – and more important to search engine visibility: DESCRIPTON and KEYWORDS.
As recently as a few years ago, good META tags represented a quick trip to high search engine rankings and thousands of visitors. Soon though, search engine spammers caught on, and unhappy searchers found themselves sifting through search results filled with porn or gambling sites. Not because they were looking for those topics, but because they had entered seemingly unrelated search strings like "Switzerland ski vacation" or "buy Barbie clothes."
The spammers had learned how to divert traffic to their sites by disguising the real content and purpose of their sites with misleading META tag content.
Search engines quickly caught on and tweaked their algorithms, reducing the weight given to DESCRIPTION and KEYWORD content. Although usually not completely eliminated from the algorithms, both tags faded in both importance and popularity. Some webmasters dropped the tags entirely, thinking them irrelevant.
But wait! They're back! As American author and humorist Mark Twain might have quipped: "Reports of their demise have been greatly exaggerated."
Using META Tags Effectively
META tag importance is increasing due to the proliferation of Flash sites. Those created in earlier versions of Flash are almost completely without indexable page content.
That's the danger we warned about years ago: splash pages may drown your site.
Thankfully, later versions of Flash gave developers the option of including more text content and contain increased accessibility options. Note the important part of that statement though: it is optional. Many developers either don't understand the importance or they don't want to spend the extra time to add that information.
So some search engines — like Google! — are taking another look at META tags and including the META DESCRIPTION content in search results text when the site is an all- or mostly-Flash site.
This appears to still be experimental on Google's part. Not every all-Flash site displays that way in the search results – but not every site has a DESCRIPTION tag either! Right now, it's not all engines, but Google is an industry leader in many areas. Why not get your site prepared, just in case?
Your META Tags May Need Updating
Now is the time to review the content of your META DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS tags. If you created the original pages years (or even months) ago, you've probably changed the content at least once to bring the page up to date. But did you even think to update your META tags at the same time?
NetMechanic's HTML Toolbox validation tool contains a META tag generator that helps you write valid DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS tags. If you're having trouble selecting the right keywords for your site, use Search Engine Power Pack's keyword selection tool.
Learn more about META tags and how to use them from our Webmaster Tips archived articles:
It's an easy technique that can give your site a boost over competitors who won't take the time to add or update their META information. You have nothing to lose and a lot to gain!
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