Meta element

Meta Elements and their Usage in SEO - Meta elements can specify HTTP headers for the HTML page served from the web server to the client. - The 'meta charset' element indicates the character encoding of the page. - Meta tags can be used to describe the contents of the page. - The 'meta name=description' element describes the contents of a web page. - Meta elements can be used to specify the media type and character encoding. - Meta elements provide information about the web page for search engines. - Search engine optimization (SEO) focuses on using meta elements to improve rankings. - The value of meta tags in SEO is debated among the search engine community. - Major search engine robots consider many factors in ranking a page, with meta tags being just a portion. - Search engine ranking rules change frequently, making the role of meta tags in SEO uncertain. Specific Meta Attributes - The keywords attribute was popularized by search engines in 1995. - There is no consensus on whether the keywords attribute affects ranking. - It is speculated that keywords in the meta can impact ranking if they appear in the page copy. - Google no longer takes keywords into account for ranking. - Yahoo! still supports the keywords meta tag along with other factors for search rankings. - Title tags are the second most important on-page factor for SEO after content. - Title tags convey what a page is about to search engines. - Including primary and secondary keywords in the title tag used to be standard SEO practice. - Title tags are displayed in search results, web browser tabs, and social media links. - Google has made changes to how much content is shown in title tags. - The description attribute is supported by major search engines like Yahoo! and Bing. - Google uses the description attribute when information about the page is requested. - The description provides a concise explanation of the page's content. - It can affect click-through rates on search engine results pages. - Google does not consider the description meta element as a ranking factor. - The language attribute indicates the natural language of the website. - It helps search engines understand in which language a page is written. - User-agents use language information to select language-appropriate fonts. - It is useful for websites written in multiple languages. - The language attribute improves the user experience of the page. - The robots attribute controls whether search engine spiders can index a page. - It can prevent a page from being indexed or links from being crawled. - The noindex value prevents a page from being indexed. - The nofollow value prevents links from being crawled. - Other values like noarchive and nosnippet influence how search engines index pages. Search Engine Usage of Meta Tags - Google, Yahoo!, and MSN used the title and abstract of the DMOZ listing for website listings in search engine results pages (SERP). - Microsoft introduced the NOODP value in May 2006 to allow webmasters to specify that the Open Directory Project content should not be used for their website listings. - Google followed in July 2006 and Yahoo! in October 2006. - Google reported stopping the use of DMOZ in 2017, rendering the NOODP directive ignored. - The syntax for the NOODP tag is the same for all search engines that support it. - Google does not use HTML keyword or meta tag elements for indexing. - Web sites repeating the same meta keyword may have their ranking decreased by search engines. - Search engines may ignore the meta keyword element completely. - Google uses meta tag elements for displaying site links in search results. - Swiftype considers meta tags as a mechanism for signaling relevancy for their web site search engines. Redirects and HTTP Message Headers - Meta refresh elements can be used to automatically refresh a web page or redirect the user to a different location. - Auto-refreshing via a META element has been deprecated for more than ten years. - Client-side redirects can interfere with the normal functioning of a web browser's back button. - Auto-redirects via markup are not in compliance with the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. - Some modern browsers, like Safari, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera, overcome the back button problem caused by redirects. - Meta elements with the form 'meta http-equiv=foo content=bar' can be used as alternatives to HTTP headers. - The HTML 4.01 specification allows parsing this tag by HTTP servers, but no web servers currently implement this behavior. - User agents emulate the behavior of some HTTP headers as if they had been sent in the response header itself. Alternative Approaches to Meta Elements - HTML elements like TITLE, ADDRESS, INS, DEL, title attribute, and cite attribute can handle certain pieces of meta data instead of using META. - A back-of-book-style index for a website can be used as an alternative to meta elements for enhanced subject access. - ALIWEB used an index file in 1994 to provide information commonly found in meta keywords attributes. - Authors may decide to use a link element with a proper value for its rel attribute when the content attribute value is a URL. - For language specification, it is best to use HTTP headers, meta elements, or attributes depending on the situation.