Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Over the years Meta tags have become quite misunderstood and usually used incorrectly on the Internet. With the help of this document a brief explanation of Meta tags will be given, a complete break down of all the Meta tags that we are aware of, and recommendations of which ones you should or shouldn't use for your website.
What are Meta tags? This question gets asked to us all the time. Meta tags are a snippet of informational code that has been located between your <HEAD> </HEAD> tags that are apart of your HTML document you've generated.
There are two known styles/attributes that you'll see for Meta tags. These happen to be:
1. <META HTTP-EQUIV="name" CONTENT="content">
2. <META NAME="name" CONTENT="content">
Back in the mid 90s Meta tags were developed to assist in the rapid growth of web pages, but soon after in the late 90s something major happened. Many Webmasters, generally those that ran adult orientated websites, abused the use of Keyword Meta tags. Many unrelated keywords were placed on their site in the Meta tag section, causing their pornographic sites to begin appearing in search results not related to topics such as "Smithsonian".
Eventually the major search engines began discontinuing the use of Meta tags for main criteria when listing sites. Google always refused the use of Meta tags, and now currently only will index. There are several searches that do read Meta tags in their own way.
Meta Google
The Meta Google tag has several options that are exclusive for use with Google. These include:
The following list of links will take you to information about each of the individual Meta tags that we offer information on:
Meta Content Language: May be used to declare the natural language of the document. May be used by robots to categorize by language.
Example:<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Language" CONTENT="en-GB">
Recommendation: Use this tag only if your webpage is written in non-US English. While we have not tested this to ensure it works, we have had reports from our members that it does indeed help in relation to being cataloged properly by search engines.
Meta Content Script Type: Specifies the default scripting language of the document.
Example:<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Script-Type" CONTENT="text/javascript">
Recommendation: Do not use. Search engines do not need this tag to detect scripts, they can do so on their own. Browsers do not use this tag either as they have other detection methods in place.
Meta Content Style Type: Specifies the default style sheet (Cascading Style Sheet, or CSS) language for a document.
Example:<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Style-Type" CONTENT="text/css">
Recommendation: Do not use. Search engines do not need to know the style sheet. Web browsers also do not look to the meta tags for the style sheet information.
Meta Content Type: It is now recommended to always use this tag even if you use a DTD declaration above the Header. Failure to do so may cause display problems where, for instance, the document uses UTF-8 punctuation characters but is displayed in ISO or ASCII charsets. There are other benefits, but you will need to be a subscriber to our SEO Revolution Newsletter (paid membership) to get the full scoop of what this tag can do for your site.
Example:<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
What are Meta tags? This question gets asked to us all the time. Meta tags are a snippet of informational code that has been located between your <HEAD> </HEAD> tags that are apart of your HTML document you've generated.
There are two known styles/attributes that you'll see for Meta tags. These happen to be:
1. <META HTTP-EQUIV="name" CONTENT="content">
2. <META NAME="name" CONTENT="content">
Back in the mid 90s Meta tags were developed to assist in the rapid growth of web pages, but soon after in the late 90s something major happened. Many Webmasters, generally those that ran adult orientated websites, abused the use of Keyword Meta tags. Many unrelated keywords were placed on their site in the Meta tag section, causing their pornographic sites to begin appearing in search results not related to topics such as "Smithsonian".
Eventually the major search engines began discontinuing the use of Meta tags for main criteria when listing sites. Google always refused the use of Meta tags, and now currently only will index. There are several searches that do read Meta tags in their own way.
Meta Google
The Meta Google tag has several options that are exclusive for use with Google. These include:
- Googlebot: noarchive - does not allow Google to display cached content
- Googlebot: nosnippet - does not allow Google to display excerpt or cached content
- Googlebot: noindex - similar to the robots meta element
- Googlebot: nofollow - do not allow Google to pass any PageRank or link popularity to the link served.
The following list of links will take you to information about each of the individual Meta tags that we offer information on:
Meta Content Language: May be used to declare the natural language of the document. May be used by robots to categorize by language.
Example:<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Language" CONTENT="en-GB">
Recommendation: Use this tag only if your webpage is written in non-US English. While we have not tested this to ensure it works, we have had reports from our members that it does indeed help in relation to being cataloged properly by search engines.
Meta Content Script Type: Specifies the default scripting language of the document.
Example:<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Script-Type" CONTENT="text/javascript">
Recommendation: Do not use. Search engines do not need this tag to detect scripts, they can do so on their own. Browsers do not use this tag either as they have other detection methods in place.
Meta Content Style Type: Specifies the default style sheet (Cascading Style Sheet, or CSS) language for a document.
Example:<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Style-Type" CONTENT="text/css">
Recommendation: Do not use. Search engines do not need to know the style sheet. Web browsers also do not look to the meta tags for the style sheet information.
Meta Content Type: It is now recommended to always use this tag even if you use a DTD declaration above the Header. Failure to do so may cause display problems where, for instance, the document uses UTF-8 punctuation characters but is displayed in ISO or ASCII charsets. There are other benefits, but you will need to be a subscriber to our SEO Revolution Newsletter (paid membership) to get the full scoop of what this tag can do for your site.
Example:<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
