Meta tags and Search Engines

The most attractive webpages for the search engines are those that give information
in the way each search engine wants it. Meta tags play a role in this
and here you find out why and how to make meta tags.
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Last up-dated: Dec. 15, 2009

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Meta tags contain information about the human readable content but are intended to be read by computers.

Why Meta Tags ?

On different discussion forums you can still find an on/off "quarrel" between "experts" whether one should use meta tags or not. Especially the meta tags "Keyword" and "Description". The usual reason given for leaving these out, is that the search engines do not use them anymore.

It's true many search engines doesn't use the meta tags as such, because of earlier misuse by designers. Instead these search engines pick the keywords from the text and the description part from one or two sentences in the beginning of the text.

However, I know for a fact, that at least some search engines do use the "Description" meta tag as it's written. This I know, because I have seen the description of some of my pages in the search result, word by word exactly as I have written the description meta tags on those pages.

All search engines do try to present relevant information to each query, that's there main business. To do this they need to cut out spamming and "fake" webpages - those made only for income from advertisements. Yahoo search engine uses "keywords" meta tag to check if the words in the tags are present in the webpage content. In other words, include only words from the content of that page in <title>, keywords, and description meta tags.

I would suggest you do the same way as the search engines. When your page is ready for uploading, then you pick your keywords from the text, exactly as the search engines do. You do not know anyway, which search words will bring the visitors to your site, so just concentrate on your content - that's what is most important.

As keywords use a maximum of 25 words or about 200-250 characters, including commas and spaces. For the description I suggest just two short sentences, which you repeat in the text at the top of your page, again same as many search engines do - max about 250 characters, including commas, full stops, and spaces.

"Tags" are what you put inside HTML code brackets: < and >. There are two kinds of meta tags (plus the <title></title> tag):

<meta http-equiv="...." >, which give technical information about the document to the server and the browsers - like language and characters to use.
<meta name="..." >, which can contain personal information and also information intended for the search engines.
<title>Heading of the Webpage</title>, is a "special" meta tag required in all html documents, giving a concise and accurate description of the document's content.

All "meta name" tags are of the same format:<meta name="..." content="...">
Example:<meta name="Keywords" content="max,twenty five,words"> and <meta name="Description" content="Two short sentences only. Max. 250 characters.">
Google's advice - July 08, 2009 - about the description meta tag says maximum 160 characters, although the snippets in the search results pages are longer, sometimes up to almost 300 characters. I still follow the earlier advice about maximum 250 characters with the most important keywords / search phrases at the beginning.

In the end the keywords are needed to classify your page correctly. Isn't it then better to supply the most important keywords yourself, then you can be sure your page is classified correctly. ExactSeek.com requires "Description" meta tag before they include a page.

Windows Live search engine requires a robots.txt file and also <title> and "Description" tags. All search engines register web pages by file name (i.e. index.html).

The South African search engine "Ananzi" gives detailed instructions on how to write the meta tags.

Quote: "..recommends meta tags in the <head> section of a site's front page, these would describe the content found on the site" Unquote

May be this is how "Ananzi" wants them. But I wouldn't recommend this way for other search engines. You should write title, descriptions, and keywords meta tags separately for each web page.

I wrote the above about Ananzi in 2006. September 27, 2007, Google recommends the same; on home page a site-level description meta tag and a page-level description on all other pages.

Generally search engines are giving "plus points" for the following:
- simple, error free, and clearly coded design,
- well thought out and easy to use navigation ( = menu ),
- well written error free descriptive text,
- (sub-) titles and meta tags that help identifying keyword phrases, and
- links that accurately describe what can be found at "the other end".

There are may be about a hundred recognized meta tags. A certain number of these are necessary and others are optional. Don't overdo it and include a lot of unnecessary ones. Keep your code as short as possible.

I regard the following as the only necessary meta tags:

Document type, Character set, and Language tags for the browser. For simple HTML the "doc.type" is included in the "char.set" tag with content="text/html;" The language tag is also for the search engine to avoid that the spider "thinks" you have spelling errors (total = 3). Language tags are explained in: Don Pedro's Character Sets and Language Tags.
For yourself: author, copyright, and date when page first published tags - in case somebody borrows or "steals" your fantastic content. (total = 3). You can check for possible copies of even part of your text at Copy Scape for free. Or you can take a string of words unique to your page, enclose them in "quotation marks" and search in the major search engines.
Ratings tag. Many browsers are set not to show "violence" or "pornography". When there is a restriction, many browser won't show pages without rating tag either. (add one meta tag) I use content="general"
Geographical ("Distribution" tag) coverage of your page. You have two choices: content="Global" or content="local". In case you are, for instance, selling something to Europeans, then most probably you don't want inquiries from P.R. China. In this case you could make content="local,Europe". (one more tag)
Description, Keywords, and Title tags are required by many search engines (3 tags). It's recommended you use max. 67 characters, including empty space (W3C says max. 64 characters), for your title tag. The "title" tag is required in all HTML documents.

If title and description tags are identical or too similar on your webpages it can by search engines be interpreted as duplicate content - especially if the body text is very short.
Starting July 14, 2006, you can add a new meta tag <meta name="robots" content="NOODP>. The result is all search engines that recognize this tag will use either your own description tag or a "snippet" of your actual text instead of something from the Open Directory Project, especially Google and MSN.

Starting Feb.-March 2007 Yahoo has implemented an other meta tag: "noydir", which will cause search engines not to use Yahoo Directory titles and descriptions. It works the same as "noodp". If you use both tags it's recommended you make one meta tag only: "noodp,noydir". From April 2007 Yahoo stopped using their own directory "title" and "description" information for registered webpages. Other search engines can still, however, use them.
[For printer-friendly pages add a "no-index" tag.]
Starting December 2007 both Google and Yahoo recognize a new tag: content="noarchive", which means that page will not be cached. Especially if you have changed a page very much but still keeping same file name you don't want the old page content to show up from the search engine cache.

This makes a total of about a dozen ± a few absolutely necessary meta tags. Don't try to be "cute" and add extra tags. The longer the code - the longer it takes for your visitor to download your page. Naturally even short tags - if there are a hundred of them - takes a certain time to download.

Almost all commercial websites do have: Doctype, title, description, and keywords tags - in this order. The similarities in the layout of the code are so strong, one cannot escape the feeling a great majority of designers are using the same kind of HTML editor or Content Management System.

I haven't noticed any difference in search engine results depending on where in the <head> section for instance the <title> tag is - first or last. You can still even find webpages without keywords meta tag on the first search engine results page.

How do Search Engines Use Meta Tags ?

Google uses page titles and meta tags (keywords and description) to help determine which pages are relevant for a certain query. Yahoo uses <title> and keywords to detect "spam". This is done by comparing these two meta tags with the text on the page.

When you try to associate your website or a certain webpage with a certain country, the action is called geolocation. Google uses mostly your server's IP-number, while other search engines rely on the webpage's country code extension. It doesn't work very well yet (2009).

Meta tags are not some kind of magic, they are included in those factors that determine the importance and the "trust" for a certain webpage. But it pays to get the details right. The more of the factors that the search engines consider you have "right" on your pages, the better your pages stand in the ever increasing competition for searchers.

Try to truly assist the search engines to really "understand" what your webpage is about. For this I suggest you keep your description and keywords meta tags as concise and specific as possible. Of course you write the meta tags specifically for each separate webpage. Every page is different, isn't it?

I cannot say it in a more concise or better way, so I quote Google's Vanessa:

QUOTE: "For specific queries the generated snippet is based on where the query terms are found on the page"
and "... for some generic queries, where a logical snippet isn't found in the text, the first lines of the text is used." UNQUOTE

(underlined by Don Pedro) So if you put your meta description at the very top, immediately after your heading, then your description will be used sometimes. Isn't that better than a random automated quote ?

According to Pandia Newsletter ( May, 2009 ) Google normally keeps the snippet at maximum 150 characters. Still in May I noticed sometimes longer snippets in the search results pages. I counted the characters and the result was the longer snippets was on average about 230 characters. So sometimes it stretches to 200-250 characters.

To take full advantage of the three meta tags (title, keywords, and description) and for sure get them correct I suggest you use a keyword analysis tool. This tool gives you how many times each keyword and each key phrase appears in your document (webpage). Include both 3-4 of the top phrases and enough of top relevant keywords until you have maximum 25 words. Each word you include once only. The description you write around your most important key phrase and the couple of most important keywords. See How to Find Popular Keywords ? for more sources to useful keywords.

Google recommends to use meta description tag. Google has furthermore published their own way of interpreting webpage meta tags (12/2007), including which ones their programs ( spiders ) disregard:

<title></title> - always used and very important
<meta name="description" content="..."> used sometimes, see comment above

According to Google other tags are optional and up to the webmaster. Of course, all meta tags are not intended just for the search engines only. For instance, some are required in all HTML documents and others contain information for the browsers.

How to Write a Nice Description ?

Imagine you had to convince a prospective customer or visitor to visit your webpage. You have to do this over the telephone and you are allowed to use maximum 250 characters - two or three short sentences only.

What would you tell this important person over the telephone ? Write down what you think is the best convincing description for that webpage and there you have a good and nice description.

Google has confirmed their use of descriptions meta tags and published descriptions of good meta description strategies.

As the content on your webpages evolves you need to regularly renew your keyword analysis - at least after any big addition or re-write. That way you keep your keywords and descriptions meta tags up to date and have a control you haven't mixed up your "keywords mix".

Meta tags and Search Engines

Why Meta Tags ?

Minimum Number of Meta Tags

How do Search Engines Use Meta Tags ?

How to Write a Nice Description ?