SEOs are first introduced to Meta Tags that are the best tools in a SEOâs repertoire. They are first thing to be noticed by search engine crawlers as theyâre included at the top in the header of every web page. But SEOs obsession with Meta Tags could kill the objective of tagging.
Here weâll discuss the good, the bad and the indifferent Meta Tags
The good Meta tags
These are must have tags for every web page and youâll see that the list of good tags is very small. There are only a few tags that can be called good.
Meta content type: It is all about character set of a web page and it shows how the page will be rendered on a browser. It is the most important tag as, without content-type meta tag, the page wonât be legible for the viewers.
Title: Title tag is different from meta as it is incorporated into the header but it is crucial for SEO as it describes the pages. Every page should have a unique title tag because each page has a different objective.
Meta description: It is an infamous page as it is most misused. A meta description is used to help users find the page in SERPs; it is an ad copy that youâre free to write using your creativity. Importance of this page is that it determines whether the viewers click on your page. You should write it within 160 characters and you should write it get the attention of viewers.
Viewport: It is for mobile marketing and if you arenât using this tag then you could be edged out by your counterparts that are better equipped to target mobile market.
The bad meta tags
These tags are bad not because they harm the web page but because they eat space. They were using a decade ago but not today.
Author/web author: It contains name of the author of the web page
Revisit after: It is a command to the robots to revisit the webpage after some time
Rating: It denotes maturity rating of content on the web page
Expiration/date: It tells about the date of creation and expiry of the web page. But the expired web pages can simply be removed from site
Copyright: It isnât needed as footer of your site says âCopyright 20xxâ
Abstract: It is used to draw an abstract from the content for educational purpose
Distribution: It controls viewership of the web page but when the site is open for the world, this tag doesnât make sense
Generator: It tells about the program that created the web page
Cache control: It tries controlling how the page is cached in browsers. But HTTP header does the same task
Resource type: It tells about resource of the page like âdocumentâ
The indifferent meta tags
Websites use these tags for different reasons but you can do without them
Social meta tags: Social media data is crucial for sharing but not required per se
Robots: It is all about indexing and link following. Not specifying robot tag will read index and follow. You should use robot only when you want to change these commands like noindex but follow.
Specific bots (Googlebot): These tags give specific bot instructions like noodp (not to use your DMOZ listing information) and noydir (not use Yahoo Directory listing). But search engine robots are good at these types of things. If you still feel you need these tags, youâre free to use
Language: If youâre targeting global market and donât want to reveal primary language used on the page then use this tag
Geo: This meta tag is used by Bing and not Google and denotes geographic position of web page
Keywords: There is no reason to use this page, if youâre creating a website from scratch but if the site is automated then you need this tag
Refresh: It is for redirect
Site verification: Sites are verified by search engines but this tag is needed as there is no other form of verification available
Conclusion
My advice with meta tags is to stick to the bare minimum. Donât go on adding tags you donât need as the tags will only eat out space on the page. The less coding you have, the better is for your page.
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