Are meta tags important?

Meta tags <meta> are valid (x) html elements that are used on web pages to provide web browsers with important information about the page. They are not visible to the visitor, unless you view the page source information. Although invisible to human visitors, they can have a dramatic influence on the user's experience. Meta tags are placed between the <head> tags in each web page and so load before the rest of the document. This allows web browsers to gain valuable information about the page before it displays it.

Are meta tags important to search engines?

Although most search engines ignore most meta tags, some tags are important to all search engines and some search engines use most of the meta tags. All search engines read the description tag, robots tag and usually the rating or classification tags. The amount of importance for each tag is determined by each search engine. Most search engines ignore the keywords tag. All meta tags are important to some search engines and some meta tags are important to all search engines.

Good meta tags use helps web browsers work faster

The time that the browser takes to load and display a web page can be much longer, when the browser has to try to interpret the page markup code. Good meta tag use, allows browsers to efficiently load and display each page. A good web page is usable by everyone.

A user friendly website is also friendly to user-agents

Web browsers, like Internet Explorer and Firefox, are actually known as user-agents. User-agents use meta tags to display web pages the way the page author intended. Good use of meta tags allow the user-agents to get the information to the user more quickly and accurately. User friendly web pages are more accessible to people with disabilities.

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The most important meta tags

The single most important tag is the description tag, since it often appears as the text explanation of the page under the page title on the search engine results pages. Since the description tag should contain a brief summary of the page's information content, it's also very important to good seo. A good SEO will often spend more than an hour writing each page description, it's that important.

Meta tag abuse

Early forms of search engine optimization often involved false manipulation of meta information. This is where some of the false SEO information still comes from today. Whatever the Black Hat method of meta tag manipulation, it's now a complete waste of time and money. Search engines figured out the tricks a long time ago and will severely penalize sites that still try to use them.

Let's explain meta tags used on this site

Some of our site's (x) html meta tags and a brief description of each tag

The following is a list of our site's meta tags:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="application/xhtml+xml; charset=utf-8" />

The http-equiv tag is used in several ways. This one tells the browser which markup and character set used to determine how the page should display.

<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en" />

The common language used for the text content on the page. The tag indicates that it is written in basic English.

<meta name=" description" content="Meta tags are still important to search engines, web browsers and site users. Use meta tags correctly" />

The description of the page is a summary of the information contained in the text.

<meta name="keywords" content="meta tag tags good use important" />

The keywords tag is not very important, frequently ignored by search engines and often often mis-used. Using commas to separate keywords reduces their overall value to search engines and usually make the list too long.

<meta name="abstract" content="Good meta tags use is still important." />

The abstract is a general description of the page and it's importance to the site.

<meta name="classification" content="web design" />

The classification tag helps search engines to determine the type of information the site contains.

<meta name="rating" content="General" />

The content rating tag is now mostly outdated, since there are better ways of verifying a site's suitability for various audiences. See the Family Online Safety Institute site. It still should be used, simply as a general indication of the site's content.

<meta name="language" content="en" />

A more definite indicator to user-agents for the language used than the http-equiv tag noted above.

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

This tag is strictly for search engines. Together with the robots tags, the distribution tag tells search engines that this document can be listed anywhere. Valid content for this tag include: Global, local or IU. Internal use documents should probably not be posted for the public anyway. Use the Global content for most business information pages.

<meta name="country" content="Canada" />

Simply a hint to search engines that give country specific search results. This tag is often ignored.

<meta name="contact" content="info@seowebsitesdesigners.com" />

The contact or contact_addr tag is really only used by the people who read source code. It is still an important tag to help people contact the author or site owner for information or verification.

<meta name="author" content="SEO Website Design Team" />

A very important tag. Business websites need to establish credibility. Every document has an author. Anonymous doesn't write credible web pages. Several members of our team have and will contribute to this page. Where only one or two people wrote the text content, acknowledge them by name.

<meta name="copyright" content="SEO Website Designers" />

Another fairly important tag. Good business information is valuable. You can have some protection from the improper use of your site's information by advising site visitors of your copyright statement. Although not actually a <meta> tag, using the < link rel html element is also a good way to direct visitors and robots to your copyright © information page. The <link> element is also placed between the <head> tags in your web page and has some very important uses.

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Meta tags and SEO myths

Although meta tags are still important, it's not for the reasons that many web designers claim. Meta tags generally, don't have too much value in search engine optimization. When search engines relied on meta data to index and rank web pages, web developers abused them. Now, most search engines rarely trust them.

Meta tags Summary

Meta tags are still very important to every good website. For a business website, the proper use of meta tags can make a big difference in the visitor's experience. Before you hire a business website designer, read their source code to determine if they know how to use meta tags correctly. You can read the source code on any web page by simply clicking the right mouse button and then clicking on the View source (in Explorer) or View page source (in Firefox). Try it on this page. If the meta data is only directed at search engines, i.e. 25-50 words listed in the keywords tag are too many to be taken seriously and the only other tag is description, caution should definitely be your guide. You're probably looking at a graphic artist website, not a professional designer website. Good websites are where you find good answers to good questions.

If you find our meta tags information useful and wish to link to this web page, simply copy and paste the following link text onto any of your site's pages:

<a href="http://www.seowebsitesdesigners.com/meta-tags.html">Why are meta tags important?</a>

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Internet search for more useful meta tag information

Please note: Google does not permit direct link searches from non-exclusive business sites and so they are not included on the search engine list. Please search Google directly at www.google.com

Search multiple search engines: yahoo . yahoo.ca . bing . bing.ca . alta vista . ask by pressing each search engine name.