HTTP Meta tags – examples and descriptions of their use – any my opionion on their importance.
I do not necessarily agree with or use all of these, but use this as a reference with some guidelines.
Don’t include them ‘just for the sake of it’, but if they are relevant – add them.
HIGHLY IMPORTANT ONES
Title
The Title Tag should contain no more than 70 characters (although 100 characters may be indexed depending on the engine).
TitleTitleTitle Description
OK, its not exactly a META Tag, but the Description Tag can have up to 150 characters (although, 200 – 250 characters may be indexed and only a smaller portion of this amount be displayed). Also used in the browser top bar, tabs, and in the taskbar.
Keywords
In the Keyword tag use specific descriptive ‘words’ or ‘phrases’ to match the content on your site. You can use up to 200 characters with each word (or phrase) separated with a comma(,).
MEDIUM IMPORTANCE – USE IF REQUIRED
Robots
The values ALL and NONE set all directives on or off: [ALL=INDEX,FOLLOW] and [NONE=NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW].
MS Tags
Do you want Microsoft products to automatically generate smart tags on your web pages. No? Then add this!
IE6 Image Toolbar
I found this one to prevent the image options toolbar popping up in IE6 over the images.
Expires
Use “never” unless your site will expire. (Eg. Tue, 18 Apr 2006 14:57:09 GMT | Note: Requires RFC1123 date format.
Cache Control
Cache control level. None / Public / Private / no-Cache / no-Store
No Cache
This directive indicates cached information should not be used and instead requests should be forwarded to the origin server.
Copyright
Who is the Owner of the site? or the Company Name
Designer
The webmasters name
Revisit-After
Tell the search engines how often this page updates. (Eg. 21 days | Note: Most search engines do not support this Meta Tag)
LOW IMPORTANCE
Publisher
Owner, Webmaster, Company Name, etc..
Author
The Author Tag is for the person who wrote the material for the site. Usually the client.
Subject
The Subject Tag is for what your site is about. Business, music, hobby, cars. You can use up to 100 characters.
Classification
The Classification tag is similar to description but more in detail.
Geography
Where are you located? Insert your full address?
Language
Is your site in English, Spanish, French…..?
City
Your City
Country
Your Country
Distribution
Use [Global] unless it is a [Local] only site.
SPECIAL USE
Redirect / Refresh
Used to redirect browsers to another page, or refresh the current page.
‘0’ is the number of milliseconds, so use ‘3000’ for a 3 second redirect.