Meta Tags for SEO, CTR, and Browser Compatibility

[djbaxter]

For SEO:

1. unique title tag for each page, maximum 65-75 characters (Google used to cut it off at 65 but now uses 70)
2. unique meta description tag for each page, maximum 150-200 characters (not used in ranking but may be used as the displayed snippet for search results depending on the search term)
3. for local search, geo tags help - the following are from one of my sites (space added after "<" so it will display in this post:
   • < meta name="geo.position" content="45.423494;-75.697933">
   • < meta name="geo.placename" content="Ottawa, Ontario, Canada">
   • < meta name="geo.region" content="Ontario-CA">
4. if you have listings in ODP/DMOZ or the Yahoo Directory (or hope to), use the following to ensure that search engines use your snippet and not the one in the directory:
   • < meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOODP">
   • < meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOYDIR">
5. no other meta tags matter for SEO

For consistent rendering across browsers:

1. Use an appropriate DOCTYPE declaration such as (space added after "<" for display):
   < !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"-->[/CODE]Note that DOCTYPE is inserted BEFORE the "head" tag.
2. Use an appropriate charset declaration such as (space added after "<" for display):
   < meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">

Other:

If you have a "favicon", use the following:

• < link REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="favicon.ico">

That's pretty much it - anything else is filler.

 

[bigcat1967]

Use an appropriate DOCTYPE declaration such as (space added after "<" for display):
< !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

I remember when I first started out - I used a "strict" doctype tag instead of a transitional. Learned a big lesson there. I mostly showed it to people at my work - and they would go home and my site wouldn't display correctly inside their browser - others it did. I finally learned about how important the doctype tag was.

 

[delle]

This is pretty much cool stuff, i've never heard some of these tips.

 

[Mozzyweb]

This appears absolutely new to me! Thanks you, guys for revelation this stuff!

 

[ramonacole]

That really is new for me too, thank you.

 

[jzhao1688]

Using the correct meta tags help, but also make sure your site is W3 compliant so that makes your coding search engine friendly. If your coding aren't search engine friendly they find it hard to crawl your site and may also stop crawling your site?

 

[djbaxter]

No. Whether or not your site is W3C compliant is irrelevant to search engines.

Avoiding coding errors matters. W3C compliance doesn't matter.

 

[ramonacole]

Thanks for the tips. Though I wouldn't care about that much, 'cause search engines not counting meta tags for a long time already.

 

[djbaxter]

Thanks for the tips. Though I wouldn't care about that much, 'cause search engines not counting meta tags for a long time already.

Read the first post again. The ones described there do matter.

 

[andrew2833]

Thanks MINSTREL, I haven’t heard or read before about geo tags and meta names if you have listing in DMOZ. Do you think that local search important for SEO?

 

[djbaxter]

Yes. Local search seems to be becoming increasingly important and will probably continue to do so as smart phones become more common.

 

[Susy]

Thanks a lot for these tips. I have known little about the proper tagging. I'm not too good at HTML but think I'll cope with this.

 

[Sarahthompson]

I thought Google didn't place much weight on metatags anymore? Is it sitll an SEO must?

 

[djbaxter]

Re-read the first post in this thread. I've listed the few that make a difference and that are important. as I said there:

That's pretty much it - anything else is filler.

 

[iqbal]

I have read about geo tag. but No 4 is new to me

 

[djbaxter]

I have read about geo tag. but No 4 is new to me

I'm not sure if the geo tags are still useful. I think I read somewhere that they're being ignored by Google because of course they're easily spoofed.

 

[CarolWales]

In my opinion, the geo tags are important but they are not as important as the unique content or the right use of keywords.

 

[fandango123]

thanks great info!