Understanding HTML Meta Tags

In the early days of search engine optimisation, meta tags were an essential addition to any web page as they provided an invaluable method of reaching the desired search engine position. As search engines have evolved however new search algorithms have been introduced to combat the excessive abuse of meta tags; namely meta keywords - despite this change in algorithm, if used correctly meta tags can still add a great deal of value and information to a website and its pages.

What is a meta tag?

Meta tags are elements of HTML that occur at the top of a coded website inside the head section of an HTML or XHTML document. Meta tags can be used to define specific information about a particular web page such as a description, relevant keywords or even how a search engine should read and interpret information on the HTML page. Although these meta elements can be seen by search engine bots, they are not directly visible to a user visiting the site however they can be viewed by looking at the source code of a web page.

In the very simplest of terms meta tags provide data which search engines can read - this allows the search engine to identify how a website or web page should be categories based on its content.

Keywords, descriptions and spiders

Three of the most discussed types of meta tags are the keyword, description and spider attributes however each have drastic differences in terms of importance.

Keyword Metadata

The keyword meta tag has (of recent years) become some what redundant. Despite originally having the greatest of popularity, it was noted by search engines that the keyword meta could easily be used to provide inaccurate, unreliable and misleading information about a website - hence allowing websites to gain a ranking for unrelated search terms (often of a spam related nature). A change in algorithm by the leading search engines in early 2000 (later followed by InfoSeek and AltaVista) now means that keyword meta tags have little or no impact on the keyword or phrase specific ranking of a website or web page.

So why use the keyword meta tag?

Because of the misuse of keyword metadata, these keyword elements have been completely devalued; they add little (if any) SEO value to a web page or website. Meta keywords do however still have a very useful (if overlooked) use - to provide competitors with the keywords and phrases that are being targeted in the organic search engine rankings. Quite simply it provides an excellent method of competitor market research!

Example:

meta name="keywords" content="metadata,keywords,keyword phrases,meta tags"

Description Metadata

Unlike the keyword meta, description tags have become one of the most important and relevant onsite attributes which can be used to great effect to improve the SE ranking for specific keywords and phrases. The description attribute is supported by all popular search engines and is designed to provide a clear and concise explanation of web page content. In many cases the description attribute data is often used and displayed in the SERPs (search engine results page) hence allowing people to view a brief overview of the site before deciding to visit.

Although the Web 3 Consortium (W3C) does not provide an exact specification on description length, the majority of search engines recommend a maximum of 200 characters.

Example:

meta name="description" content="An informative article on the concepts and principles of understanding HTML meta tags and attributes."

Spider Metadata

The spider, or better known robots metadata attribute is used to control how a search engine views or follows links on a web page. Links on a web page can either point to an internal page (another page contained within the same domain) or an external page (a website or web page located on a completely different domain).

The robot meta specifies whether the page of the specified website is indexed but also if and how they should follow the links on the page to other internal or external sources. There are 4 main values to the spider metadata:

• follow (allows links to be crawled)
• nofollow (prevents links from being crawled)
• index (allows the indexing of the specific page)
• noindex (prevents a page from being index – and hence appearing in the search results)
• noachive (prevents a search engine from storing a cached copy of the page)
• nosnippet (tells Google no to show your description or cached link in the SERPs)

It must be noted that robot/spider metadata is not the most ideal of methods for reducing a search engines ability to index a web page. A more reliable method is to use a separate file called a Robots.txt file however we will cover this method in an article at a later date.

Example:

meta name=”robots” content=”follow,index”

Summary

Further to the keyword, description and spider meta tags, there are a number of other metadata elements that can be used to achieve various results such as redirecting of web pages, limiting different search engine bots and HTTP message headers.

Ultimately though the meta tags covered in this article provide the basic and best meta attributes from improving and developing a sites content when being indexed or visited by a search engine.

Understanding HTML meta tags however is just the beginning of the onsite SEO development that any website can achieve. In my next article i'll be identifying how writing good page names and the ability to register domain names that combine specific keywords and extensions can help to give you're website a little extra boost!

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