Meta Fun | Meta Tag Information Guide
This is a simple guide to Meta tag information. Many tags here are necessary for most, but if you find a need for them you will have read about the tag and know where to find it. The Meta tags may need to be formatted for different mark up in some cases by closing them in xml, and xhtml for example.
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Don't go Meta crazy on your site, keep it to what you feel you need. There is much Meta out there I haven't included, such as Meta refreshes....definitely avoid these. Meta redirect can be OK, but if you cannot do a proper 301 or 302 a Java redirect is really more appropriate. Some of these Meta commands have great power to do very specific tasks for you when you need them. For example, when I am getting ready to do a redesign, I will add the no cache, no archive, decrease the time requested between crawls, and make regular modifications to the existing page in the weeks preceding the redesign launch. This gets the engines looking at my content pretty good, and I have been pretty successful getting new URLs indexed quickly and not getting "sandboxed" as a result of the redesign. Also, when you do a big redesign, get right on removing in Google Webmaster Tools or 301' ing those old dead URLs from the old design. Don't wait for them to fall off....It can take several months, and until then you have a bunch of 404s. Make sure you have a custom 404 page!
Peace and SEO
Melanie Prough
"Baby"
**We Require a Link Back Please.
6 Comments:
Hi Melanie,
Is there a difference between meta content='0' name='expires'/ and meta content='never' name='expires'/?
Is the expire Meta tag needed?
Hi Debbie,
META NAME="expires" CONTENT="Mon, 22 Jul 2002 11:12:01 GMT"
Is correct for expiration of a page and it's content...Add the <>.
It's an "all or none" tag by default. I don't believe, you would change it, except to fit your page's correct markup.
META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="all"
Tag is either all or none in the content attribute. It simply instructs the robots to index either all or none of the page's content.
This is also accomplished with the
META NAME="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,FOLLOW"
This tag stops indexing of the page as well, but links are followed. The "follow" attribute can be changed to "nofollow" and then no PageRank, or link juice (credit or vote) is given to the sites linked out to from the page.
Hope that helps...If not just comment back with what you are trying to accomplish and I might be able to help more..=-)
--Melanie
Hi Melanie,
The Comment Field refused the "<>" around the the Meta tags.
And, the question was why some sites use content='0' versus content='never' in the expires meta tag.
And, the second question about needing the expires Meta tag was whether the tag is needed if the content is specified as '0' or 'never.'
Unfortunately, finding a source that clearly explains the benefit of content='never' or '0' in this tag is hard to find using the search engine.
Is content='never' or '0' recommended to prevent spiders from overlooking the content?
Hi Debbie,
Welcome back..
"And, the question was why some sites use content='0' versus content='never' in the expires meta tag."
They are essentially the same, "0" and "never", however..."never" is proper.
It really does nothing to assist the spiders in crawling your content except to tell them it is not expired. The newer markup languages tend to use "0" as opposed to never, but whichever you like.
Then if your document does expire, like a coupon page then you would change "never" to the expiration date for the best results. (like below)
META NAME="expires" CONTENT="Mon, 22 Jul 2002 11:12:01 GMT"
--Melanie
Thank you, Melanie
You are very helpful!
Hi Debbie,
Thanks, I'm glad you found what you needed =-)
--Melanie
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