Meta Tags

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Meta tags consist
of a set of Meta elements that describe the contents of the web page. Meta tags
share valuable information regarding a web page with the browsers and the search engine crawlers. It is of prime importance
to a search engine optimizer as it is the best way to educate searchengines about the topic and content of
a particular web page. The information contained in the Meta tag is machine
parsable i.e. it is not visible to the human visitor while viewing a webpage
instead it shares information with the web browsers and bots of search engines. These tags are
inserted in the <Head> area of an HTML document.

What Purpose does HTML Meta Tags serve?

Meta Tags gives
information regarding the Meta data contained in an HTML document. These
consist of various elements and attributes which can be used to explain in
detail about the content of a particular web page. Meta Tags are an important
factor in the ranking of web pages in search engines. Therefore, it becomes necessary
for the webmasters to supply accurate information in the Meta tags regarding an
HTML document so that it becomes easier for search engine crawlers to parse the
data and collect important information regarding the webpage.

An Example of a
Meta Tag

Meta tag is found
between <Head> and </Head> areas of an HTML document. A good
example of an HTML Meta tag is given below:-

<Head>

<Title>Order food
Online</title>

order milk shake online”
/>

</head>

Here, different
elements of Meta tag are shown. The two most important ones are description and
keywords. These Meta tags shares information about the content on a particular
page. Just by looking at the web page you can tell that this web page is of a
restaurant which delivers pizza, burgers, French fries and Milk shake online.
These elements would be described in detail in the coming sections.

Difference
between Meta data and Meta tag

A Meta tag is
simply an HTML tag which consists of Meta data. Meta data are data which supplies
information regarding a data. Hence, these are data about data. We can say,
Meta tag contains Meta data. Frankly speaking, there are hardly any differences
between the two and most people use these terms synonymously.

The Title Tag and
your page content

Although the Tile
tag and the content between the body tag are not included in the meta tag but
still these are important concepts to discuss at this point. The title tag
comprises of the title of the webpage and is seen by the visitors. The title is
displayed on the top of the web browser while viewing a web page. The title tag
is the element which is shown by the searchengines on the SERPS(Search Engine Result Pages)*. Hence, the
title tag must be related to your web page content. The content of your web
page is the most important part of your entire web page. People search the web
looking for useful content and if you have the required content in your web
page then your chances of ranking high increases. Three things act in order to
rank high in the search engines:-

You should have valuable and unique content in your web
page. This should be according to the keywords selected.
The title tag should match the content of the site.
The description tag should interestingly describe the
content of the site and should not consist merely of keywords.

Detailed
description of the types of Meta Tags

The Meta
Description Tag

The Meta
description tag displays valuable information related to the website on the search engineresult pages. The description which
you see under headings while searching for queries is the content embedded
under description tag.

Example of Meta
Description Tag

An example of
description tag is given below:-

The content area
consists of the information related to your web page. This is not just a chunk
of information but it should clearly indicate the usefulness of the content in
your web page. The content that you can add on description tag is limited to
170 characters (it’s not that you cannot add beyond it but it is usually
recommended to keep it below 170 characters). The optimal length should be
between 150 and 170 characters.

Guidelines for
Meta description tag

Keep the content of the Meta description tag up to 160
characters.
Do not use duplicate description tags. Each and every
page of your website should have a unique description tag.
The Meta description tag should ideally describe your page.
The content on the description tag is displayed on the
search results so think carefully before writing the description tag.

The Meta Keyword
Tag

The Meta keyword
tag shares information related to the terms that are useful in locating that
particular information. The search engines use this information for
finding relevance of the web page content with respect to the keywords mentioned in the keyword tag. But
due to excessive spamming, search engines have devaluated the value of keyword
tag while ranking a web page.

Example of Meta
keyword Tag

An example of
keyword tag is given below:-

The content area
consists of words that are useful in locating your information. A web page
containing information about baby toys should have words like “baby gifts”,
“baby toys”,” toys for babies”, “gifts for babies” etc in its keyword tag.
Similarly a web page containing information about gadgets should have words
like “gadgets”, “latest gadgets”, “new gadgets”, “cheap gadgets” etc in their
keywords tag. Remember, do not spam this tag but include only those words which
reflect your content well.

Guidelines for
Meta keyword tag

Keep the content of the Meta keyword related to the web
page’s content.
Do not use duplicate keyword tags. Each and every page
of your website should have a unique keyword tag.
An ideal keyword tag should consist of 4-6 keywords.
Try to add words that are searchable and use short term
phrases instead of long term phrases.

The Meta Author
Tag

The Meta Author
tag defines the author of the content. This tag recently became popular because
of its consideration by Google in the SERPS. Now Google uses the content
mentioned in the author tag to display the Google plus profile of the person
who created the web page in its search results.

Example of Meta
Author Tag

The Meta Robots
Tag

The Meta Robots
Tag is a special tag made for the search engine robots. It tells the robots
(special software to crawl the web) whether or not to index a particular web
page. The robots tag serves a special purpose of converting all the links
present in a webpage to No follow (restricts the link juice from passing onto
other links present on the page).

Example of Meta
Robots Tag

Tells the search engine robots not to
index the particular web page and converts all the

active links present on the web page
into No follow.

Tells the search engine robots not to
index the particular web page .Also, the link juice

passing abilities of the links present
on the webpage remains active.

Tells the search engine robots to
index the particular web page and converts all the active

links present on the web page into No
follow.

Please note: – The default values are
index, follow.

Example Usage of a Meta Tag- How to use a Meta
Tag

A simple example
of Meta tag is given below:-

<head>

<title>Your title goes
here</title>

</head>

Other Attributes

Meta name
revisit-after

This attribute
guides the search engine robots to visit the web page after a period of days
mentioned in the content area of the tag.

Example

With this tag,
the robots are indicated to visit the site after a gap of seven days.

Meta name contact

This attribute is
used to add an email address.

Example

Meta name copyright

This attribute
defines copyright information of the document.

Example

Meta name distribution

This attribute is
used to declare the distribution of your web content.

Distribution can
be global, local or for internal use.

Example

Meta name expires

This attribute
declares the expiration time of the current document. This tag is useful for
WebPages which are created for a specified period of time based upon any event
or happening.

Example

Meta name language

This attribute
defines the language of the document.

Example

Meta name reply-to

This attribute
helps people to find out the email address of the concerned

person who needs
to be contacted regarding any reference to the document.

Example

Meta equiv refresh

This attribute
defines the time frame of how long should the browser wait

before
refreshing the webpage.

Example