Meta tags- so 90's?

[Goldielockx]

I am confused. Are meta tags not used for indexing anymore? If yes,
what are some best practices for using them?

[Adrienne Boswell]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Goldielockx
<Am***************@gt.comwriting in news:0a043013-fd75-4f6b-b4ed-
97**********@27g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:

I am confused. Are meta tags not used for indexing anymore? If yes,
what are some best practices for using them?

The meta element, description, is sometimes used for a brief description
of the page in search engines. It should reflect the page contents, and
have keywords which are relavent to that content.

The meta element, keywords, has been abused and is not really used by
SEs. However, you can still use it, and like description, the keywords
should be relavent to the page contents.

The title element, however, is very important. The title of the page
should acurately describe it, with keywords that are relavent to the
page contents. <title>Home</titleis not very descriptive.

Each page should also have a level 1 heading. Often my level 1 heading
is the same as my title element.

Clean, semantic markup also helps the bots. Use external CSS and
external javascript.

There's a lot more information and helpful folks over at
alt.internet.search-engines.

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

[Lars Eighner]

In our last episode, <Xn****************************@69.16.185.247>, the
lovely and talented Adrienne Boswell broadcast on
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Goldielockx
<Am***************@gt.comwriting in news:0a043013-fd75-4f6b-b4ed-
97**********@27g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:

>I am confused. Are meta tags not used for indexing anymore? If yes,
what are some best practices for using them?

The meta element, description, is sometimes used for a brief description
of the page in search engines. It should reflect the page contents, and
have keywords which are relavent to that content.

The things is, if you don't use it, some will use the first few lines of the
page for generic kinds of hits. Much of the time that will be meaningless
navigation aid crap, so you want to give them the description. Of course
when there is some context for the part of the page that hit, many engines
will use that. If your page title is John Mayer, the description should
make clear if this the official John Mayer site, this is a fan site, this is
a lyrics page, this the dentist John Mayer in San Diego, or whatever.

The meta element, keywords, has been abused and is not really used by
SEs. However, you can still use it, and like description, the keywords
should be relavent to the page contents.

If you have a large site, especially if you have obscure or meaningless
filenames, keywords may be useful internally. If you really have a use for
keywords, you might as well put them in a meta tag as in a comment.

The title element, however, is very important. The title of the page
should acurately describe it, with keywords that are relavent to the
page contents. <title>Home</titleis not very descriptive.

Each page should also have a level 1 heading. Often my level 1 heading
is the same as my title element.

Clean, semantic markup also helps the bots. Use external CSS and
external javascript.

There's a lot more information and helpful folks over at
alt.internet.search-engines.

--
Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/us****@larseighner.com
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the
merger of state and corporate power."-Benito Mussolini * When you write the
check to pay your taxes, remember there are two l's in "Halliburton."

[David Stone]

In article <Xn****************************@69.16.185.247>,
Adrienne Boswell <ar****@yahoo.comwrote:

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Goldielockx
<Am***************@gt.comwriting in news:0a043013-fd75-4f6b-b4ed-
97**********@27g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:

I am confused. Are meta tags not used for indexing anymore? If yes,
what are some best practices for using them?

The meta element, description, is sometimes used for a brief description
of the page in search engines. It should reflect the page contents, and
have keywords which are relavent to that content.

The meta element, keywords, has been abused and is not really used by
SEs. However, you can still use it, and like description, the keywords
should be relavent to the page contents.

The title element, however, is very important. The title of the page
should acurately describe it, with keywords that are relavent to the
page contents. <title>Home</titleis not very descriptive.

<title>Untitled</titleis even worse...

One thing to keep in mind is that the <titleis (often|always? - haven't
made an extensive study!) used by browsers for the entry in the history,
and long titles seem to get truncated. Sites which generate content
(or at least some of it) dynamically can often end up being listed
in the browser history as a bunch of pages with identical names, such
as

Fred - Google Search
Fred - Google Search
Fred - Google Search

which is a bit of a pain. (It would be nice if they could at least
append something like (1-10) etc.!)

Each page should also have a level 1 heading. Often my level 1 heading
is the same as my title element.

Which (see above) is fine if the heading is short and sweet, but not
necessarily always appropriate!