HEAD TAGS WEBSITE META TAGS

What are the Meta Tags?

Head tags and Meta tags are often considered the same thing however meta tags are the elements that are contained in the head tags. In search engine optimization or SEO, there are only three meta tags that are crucial for website optimization. Depending on the search engine, each meta tags carry different weight of importance. Keywords are no longer considered as important to Google however it is still prudent to include them for other search engines.

It is also vital to use common sense and restraint when composing meta tags as all search engines have limits as to the amount of meta data each will accept.

The three top meta tags in order of importance and their character limits are as following:

Meta Title: Maximum of 65 characters. Title tag should incorporate primary keywords and be brief and descriptive pertaining to that specific web page.

Meta Description: Maximum of 200 characters. Meta description should incorporate one or two sentences that accurately describe the web page for search engines. Primary keywords should be used as well in the description however care must be taken not to repeat them more than twice otherwise it's considered spamming.

Meta Keywords: Maximum of 250 separated by a comma and space. Primary keywords and keyword phrases that are used on the web page content are acceptable. Using non-relevant keywords in the meta keywords tag can result in ranking penalties and must reflect the web page theme.

Additional head tag elements are made of lesser meta tags as listed here:

• Meta Character Set meta tag tells browsers which character set to use.
• Meta Copyright meta tag indicates that the information on the web page has been copyrighted by the business or website and when.
• Meta Author meta tag indicates who composed the web page content.
• Meta Subject describes the theme of a website.
• Meta Email meta tag is used for a contact address although this meta tag can result in unwanted spam contact.
• Meta Language meta tag is utilized by regional search engines. eg. English - en, Canadian - en-ca
• Meta Distribution meta tag tells search engines whether a web page is oriented for local or global use.
• Meta Rating meta tag indicates the suitable rating fro the appropriate audience.
• Meta Robots meta tag tells search engines whether or not to crawl a web page and what to crawl.
• Meta Category displays the particular subject of the website.
• Meta Expires meta tag indicates when the web page content is no longer valid.
• Meta Revisit meta tag is commonly included in the head tag but is not a valid meta tag. It was originally developed for Vancouver B.C. web services and only applies to that particular region.
• Meta Publisher is the company that is actually publishing, designing, promoting and editing the website. It is not the author.
• Meta Designer indicates who or what company actually designed the website.
• Meta Generator indicates what software used to generate and edit the website.

As mentioned previously, only the title tag, meta description tag and meta keyword tag are utilized for SEO design and development or search engine optimization design and development and must be used with common sense and effective composition in order to achieve the desired results.