seo part I – meta tags

Part I of SEO

The first part in our four part series on SEO optimization.

Organic vs Paid. This is one of the questions that I hear all the time so I thought it would be good to just run through our SEO options. One thing to always keep in mind when talking about SEO is that all options need to be used in order to get the best return. No one option will work on it own. However, a solid blend of them all will.

That being said, lets jump right in. Keep in mind that this is a brief overview of the meta tags and what they are used for.

Abstract META Tag:

The Abstract META tag is a brief summary of the description META tag. It is a one line sentence which gives an overview of the entire webpage. Although not always used by search engines it is useful to search engines that read the first few lines of text of your webpages.

Example:
<META name=”Abstract” content=”Abstract phrase”>

Author META Tag:

The author META tag defines the name of the author of the document being read. While not widely supported it is recognized as part of the META Tag standard.

Example:
<META name=”Author” content=”Author Information”>

Copyright META Tag:

The copyright META tag defines any copyright statements you wish to disclose about your webpage documents.

Example:
<META name=”Copyright” content=”Copyright Statement”>

Description META Tag:

This information is displayed along with your website title on search engines that support it. Due to the nature of this tag the description should be limited to 20 words or less.

Example:
<META name=”Description” content=”Your description”>

Distribution META Tag:

Defines the level or degree of distribution of your webpage and how it should be classified in relation to methods of distribution. There are currently only three forms of distribution supported by the distribution tag: Global (ie. everyone), Local, and IU ie. (internal use only).

Example:
<META name=”Distribution” content=”Global”>

Expires META Tag:

Defines the expiration date and time of the document being indexed. Shows the date when your document will no longer be valid. You should include the Expires tag to indicate to search engines when to delete your webpage from their database. It is commonly used with the Revisit Tag to get search engines to re-visit a website every few days. This is commonly used by websites who update their content frequently and want search engines to have a fresh copy of their content.

Example:
<META name=”Expires” content=”Mon, 01 Jan 2004 12:00:00 GMT”>

Keywords META Tag:

Defines a way to categorize your website based on the search engines indexing algorithms. Make sure to choose keywords that are relevant to your site. Avoid repetition, aka spamming, as many search engines will penalize rankings for attempting to abuse their system. Priority is given to the first few words in your description, so focus on your main keywords and then elaborate by synonyms or other related words.

Example:
<META name=”Keywords” content=”first, second, third”>
Do not infringe on other companies trademarks or copyrights. This is considered “hijacking” traffic from competitors.

Language META Tag:

Defines the language of the document being indexed. Search engines which index websites based on language often read this tag to determine which language(s) is supported. This tag is particularly useful for non-english and multiple language websites.

Example:
<META HTTP-EQUIV=”Content-Language” content=”EN”>
BG (Bulgarian)
EN (English)
FI (Finnish)
FR-FR (French-France)
NO (Norwegian)
ZH (Chinese)
CS (Czech)
EN-GB (English-Great Britain)
HR (Croatian)
IT (Italian)
PL (Polish)
DA (Danish)
EN-US (English-United States)
IT (Italian)
JA (Japanese)
PT (Portuguese)
DE (German)
ES (Spanish)
FR (French)
KO (Korean)
RU (Russian)
EL (Greek)
ES-ES (Spanish-Spain)
FR-CA (French-Quebec)
NL (Dutch)
SV (Swedish)

Refresh META Tag:

Used to redirect or refresh users to another webpage after X number of seconds. This tag is usually only used when a page has moved.

Example:
<META HTTP-EQUIV=”Refresh” content=”X;URL=otherFile.html”>
Do not use on pages submitted to search engines.

Revisit META Tag:

Defines how often a search engine or spider should come to your website for re-indexing.

Example:
<META name=”Revisit-After” content=”X Days”>

Robots META Tag:

Defines how spiders should search your site to categorize the information. This tag enables you to control which pages you would like spidered, and which to ignore.

Example:
<META name=”Robots” content=”index,follow”>

noindex | index | nofollow | follow