SEO Tycoon

**juliensimon** · 07-11-2008, 12:30 PM

Hi guys,

I was fishing some information on the net and I came across an article that recommended to use those tags. <meta name="description" content="**description here”>
<meta name="keywords" content="**keywords here">
<meta name="allow-search" content="yes">
<META NAME="copyright" CONTENT="**date here">
<META NAME="audience" CONTENT="All">
<META NAME="page-type" CONTENT="**type here">
<META NAME="page-topic" CONTENT="**topic here">
<META NAME="creation_Date" CONTENT="">
<META NAME="expires" CONTENT="">
<META NAME="revisit-after" CONTENT="7 days">
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
<meta name="googlebot" content="index,follow">
<meta name="Language" content="en">
<meta name="mssmarttagspreventparsing" content="true">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"><style type="text/css">

I personally think that some of them are a waste of time, or worse dangerous if not used properly such as expire, allow search or revisit after.

What caught my attention was the copyright tag. I've never seen this one before and I wonder what legal weight does it have?

It's also the first time I see that one: meta name="mssmarttagspreventparsing". Could anyone explain me what it is about? Why would you want to prevent parsing?

Thanks in advance for your inspiring replies

**Learning Newbie** · 07-11-2008, 04:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by juliensimon

What caught my attention was the copyright tag. I've never seen this one before and I wonder what legal weight does it have?

My guess? The same legal weight a (hidden) notice in your footer that says "By reading this text and visiting this site, you are trespassing, and agree to commit suicide immediately".

If you copyright your stuff, then it's copyrighted. A meta tag in a web page doesn't change that.

**SEOFocused** · 07-11-2008, 04:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by juliensimon

I personally think that some of them are a waste of time

and you are right. some of the tags here are nothing but waste of time. for example, robots will index and follow by default unless you instruct otherwise so there is no need to tell the robot to index and follow.

**chrishirst** · 07-11-2008, 04:50 PM

**juliensimon** · 05:07 PM

thanks a lot chris. you are the lighthouse that guides me through the darkness of my knowledge.

**blogdog** · 07-11-2008, 09:31 PM

I'm sure this is a newbie question, what are the most important tags? (for SEO)
And are there best practices to implement them?

(by the way, Chris- How do you know all of that?)

**chrishirst** · 07-12-2008, 12:07 PM

Quote:

what are the most important tags? (for SEO)

There aren't any that are important. Some are useful but not important.

Quote:

(by the way, Chris- How do you know all of that?)

I've been interested in network search technology (as a programmer) since before Internet Search Engines really existed, so when Lycos and Altavista appeared on the scene (mid - late 90s) it was something new for me to find out what they did, how they did it and what they used and I've kept up that interest.
So I tend to read lots of technical info (real info, not the speculative "expert" guessology) and experiment quite a lot with different things.
I have some hostnames that were real sites until their owners (who were clients) decided to abandon them for whatever reason and I kept up the name and use it for experimenting, if it gets burned in the process then there is nothing lost apart from the registration costs.

So I can test these odd meta elements that people swear by, and see what happens with different redirects, test which page img alt attributes are weighted for etc etc in isolation.
I could even test UA cloaking, IP cloaking, JS redirects and other "black hat" stuff with no risk to live sites. Never did manage to pull off a 302 hijack though

**blogdog** · 07-12-2008, 03:24 PM

Isn't the title tag important, though?

And what you put in it. I've read conflicting info that you should keyword stuff as much in as you can and I've read to put as few words as possible so each word carries more weight in the SE. (ie: if your site sells red cars, purple cars and orange cars, the title would be "red purple orange cars" to make each word count more)

**chrishirst** · 07-12-2008, 03:49 PM

Quote:

Isn't the title tag important, though?

Yep, the title element is undoubtedly the most important element on the page, for all SEs. But the title element is NOT a meta element.

Quote:

And what you put in it. I've read conflicting info that you should keyword stuff as much in as you can and I've read to put as few words as possible so each word carries more weight in the SE. (ie: if your site sells red cars, purple cars and orange cars, the title would be "red purple orange cars" to make each word count more)

The best way to create a title, is once again to ignore search engines and create titles for humans.

Which would you click on

Red Blue Green Orange Cars

or

We have Cars! Red cars, Blue cars, Green cars. ALL colour cars

A list of keywords doesn't exactly look attractive in a SERP listing.

**blogdog** · 07-12-2008, 04:20 PM

OK, I'm a little confused (nothing new), I may have been misinformed.

I thought the title was more for the SE to index the site and the meta description was for the human. The meta desc shows on the serp for the human to read.

So:

"Red Blue Green Orange Cars" would be title for SE

and

"We have cars! etc.." would be meta desc for human to read

**chrishirst** · 07-12-2008, 06:28 PM

the title element is what is used as the anchor text for the SERP link and that is what real people read first.

The meta description MAY get used as the text snippet but it is not always the case.

Also the title will be used in the favourites/bookmarks list when real people bookmark the page in whatever browser they use, so using a realistic user friendly title can help with getting return visits.

so to continue with Big Ron's Car lot

<title>We have Cars! Red cars, Blue cars, Green cars. ALL colour cars</title>
<meta name="description" content="Looking for a Red car? or a Blue car? Maybe a green one? Big Ron has them all." />

so for a search of red car, our SERP listing should look something like

Quote:

We have Cars! Red cars, Blue cars, Green cars. ALL colour cars
Looking for a Red car? or a Blue car? Maybe a green one? Big Ron has them all.
http://www.bigronscars.com/ - 20k - Cached - Similar pages

Your title needs to be attractive and a "call to action" in an effort to drive click throughs, especially if the phrase you are chasing is a fairly generic one.

**Local SEO** · 07-13-2008, 02:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blogdog

I'm sure this is a newbie question, what are the most important tags? (for SEO)
And are there best practices to implement them?

(by the way, Chris- How do you know all of that?)

The Page Title is equal to real estates location... location... location!

**blogdog** · 07-13-2008, 06:44 PM

Thanks for that info Chris, that really helps. I was misinformed and will need to make some corrections.

You da man!

**VirtuosiMedia** · 07-14-2008, 12:55 AM

Regarding the copyright issue, I'm fairly certain that just by creating any intellectual property, it's copyrighted automatically. That includes digital media, books, music, and so on.

**ellie** · 07-14-2008, 08:50 AM

Read this for MSSmartTagsPreventParsing

http://www.html-reference.com/META_n...entParsing.htm

**juliensimon** · 07-14-2008, 03:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VirtuosiMedia

Regarding the copyright issue, I'm fairly certain that just by creating any intellectual property, it's copyrighted automatically. That includes digital media, books, music, and so on.

don't you have to submit your work to any kind of legal institute?

**VirtuosiMedia** · 07-14-2008, 03:52 PM

From your signature, I think you're Canadian. Here is a relevant link if you're curious, which should also apply to the US and a lot of other countries.

**juliensimon** · 07-14-2008, 05:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VirtuosiMedia

From your signature, I think you're Canadian.

since when the place you work at have anything to do with your nationality?

haha...I'm from France, moved to Vancouver a year ago. but yeah, I need legal advise for Canada so I guess my nationality is irrelevant

Quote:

Here is a relevant link if you're curious, which should also apply to the US and a lot of other countries.

Thanks for the link! I'll go have a look at it right now

**juliensimon** · 05:38 PM

My nationality has a influence after all.
Most important: the country the work has been published in.

Thanks for the link.

**seocd** · 07-14-2008, 06:48 PM

here is a little more on meta tags if anyone is interested:

http://www.seocompatibledesign.com/p...gs-should.html