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Webmaster Forum / HTML, CSS, Scripts / HTML / July 2008Meta tags- so 90's?
I am confused. Are meta tags not used for indexing anymore? If yes, what are some best practices for using them? Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Goldielockx <Amanda.Akamphuber@gt.com> writing in news:0a043013-fd75-4f6b-b4ed- 97f613bdc93a@27g2000hsf.googlegroups.com: > I am confused. Are meta tags not used for indexing anymore? If yes, > what are some best practices for using them? The meta element, description, is sometimes used for a brief description of the page in search engines. It should reflect the page contents, and have keywords which are relavent to that content. The meta element, keywords, has been abused and is not really used by SEs. However, you can still use it, and like description, the keywords should be relavent to the page contents. The title element, however, is very important. The title of the page should acurately describe it, with keywords that are relavent to the page contents. <title>Home</title> is not very descriptive. Each page should also have a level 1 heading. Often my level 1 heading is the same as my title element. Clean, semantic markup also helps the bots. Use external CSS and external javascript. There's a lot more information and helpful folks over at alt.internet.search-engines.  SignatureAdrienne Boswell at Home Arbpen Web Site Design Services http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info Please respond to the group so others can share In our last episode, <Xns9AEB44E744228arbpenyahoocom@69.16.185.247>, the lovely and talented Adrienne Boswell broadcast on comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html: > Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Goldielockx ><Amanda.Akamphuber@gt.com> writing in news:0a043013-fd75-4f6b-b4ed- > 97f613bdc93a@27g2000hsf.googlegroups.com: >> I am confused. Are meta tags not used for indexing anymore? If yes, >> what are some best practices for using them? > The meta element, description, is sometimes used for a brief description > of the page in search engines. It should reflect the page contents, and > have keywords which are relavent to that content. The things is, if you don't use it, some will use the first few lines of the page for generic kinds of hits. Much of the time that will be meaningless navigation aid crap, so you want to give them the description. Of course when there is some context for the part of the page that hit, many engines will use that. If your page title is John Mayer, the description should make clear if this the official John Mayer site, this is a fan site, this is a lyrics page, this the dentist John Mayer in San Diego, or whatever. > The meta element, keywords, has been abused and is not really used by > SEs. However, you can still use it, and like description, the keywords > should be relavent to the page contents. If you have a large site, especially if you have obscure or meaningless filenames, keywords may be useful internally. If you really have a use for keywords, you might as well put them in a meta tag as in a comment. > The title element, however, is very important. The title of the page > should acurately describe it, with keywords that are relavent to the > page contents. <title>Home</title> is not very descriptive. > Each page should also have a level 1 heading. Often my level 1 heading > is the same as my title element. > Clean, semantic markup also helps the bots. Use external CSS and > external javascript. > There's a lot more information and helpful folks over at > alt.internet.search-engines. SignatureLars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/> usenet@larseighner.com "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."-Benito Mussolini * When you write the check to pay your taxes, remember there are two l's in "Halliburton." > Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Goldielockx > <Amanda.Akamphuber@gt.com> writing in news:0a043013-fd75-4f6b-b4ed- [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > should acurately describe it, with keywords that are relavent to the > page contents. <title>Home</title> is not very descriptive. <title>Untitled</title> is even worse... One thing to keep in mind is that the <title> is (often|always? - haven't made an extensive study!) used by browsers for the entry in the history, and long titles seem to get truncated. Sites which generate content (or at least some of it) dynamically can often end up being listed in the browser history as a bunch of pages with identical names, such as Fred - Google Search Fred - Google Search Fred - Google Search which is a bit of a pain. (It would be nice if they could at least append something like (1-10) etc.!) > Each page should also have a level 1 heading. Often my level 1 heading > is the same as my title element. Which (see above) is fine if the heading is short and sweet, but not necessarily always appropriate! |
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