Meta Tag Library

Ever wonder if there are more meta tags than 'keywords' and 'description'? Well guess what? There are dozens, some automatically are generated by your HTML editor but not all of them are beneficial to your websites search engine rankings.  Below is a list of meta tags (courtesy of About.com's Meta Tag Library).

USAGE: Color Key: Highly Recommended, Recommended, Optional, Not Recommended, Non-English sites Only, Do Not Use

META TAG NAME           DESCRIPTION                                                      
abstract                      One sentence overview of the entire web page           
author                        Author of the web pages content                              
content-language        Natual language of the website                                   
content-script-type     Default scripting language of the page                         
content-style-type      Default CSS language of the page                               
content-type              The MIME type and character set of the page              
copyright                   Copyright date and info for the page                            
date                           To note when the web page first launched                 
description*               A short description of the web page                             
designer                     Indicates the web designer of the site                          
distribution                 How the page should be distributed                            
expires                       The expiration date of the content on the page          
generator                   The HTML editor and version that created the page  
google                       Info for Googlebots, how to index, archive, etc.           
keywords*                The keywords associated with the page                       
language                    The language of the web page                                      
msnbot                      Info for MSNBot, how to index, archive, etc.              
PICS-Label               Rating of the web page for child safe programs            
pragma                      Force the page to not be cached or reload                   
publisher                    The HTML editor and version that created the page    
rating                         Content ratings for parental control                              
refresh                        Reload the page from the server or redirect                 
reply-to                      Provide cntact info for the web page                            
resource-type             The type of document the page is                                 
revisit-after                 Supported by one search engine for spiders                 
robots                        Tells search engines what they can index and follow   
set-cookie                  Set a cookie in the web browser                                  
subject                       The subject of the web page                                        
title                            Sets the page's title, not the same as TITLE tag            

description*  The meta description tag is used by search engine spiders, and provides them with a description of your web pages. It is most often used for SEO (search engine optimization) to provide a short (1 – 3 sentences, most search engines cut off descriptions at 160 characters, I recommend staying below that number) description of the contents of the page.  I recommend using a different description for every web page on your site, helping both search engines and the people visiting the site.  I highly recommend this tag, if you don’t include it, search engines just use the first two sentences from each page, which can sometimes prove less useful to visitors to your site and SEO.

keywords* The meta keywords tag is used by some search engines to indicate what search terms the page should show up under.  While I do recommend using this meta tag since it does have some benefits, it’s benefits are not going to guarantee you any specific search page ranking so the time spent on it should be short.  Keywords should be kept to 10 - 15 single words or 1 - 2 word phrases.