A few questions about meta tags for SEO

RegEdit · #1 03-30-2012, 10:56 PM

I am well aware of the importance of meta tags on your front page, but should you have them on your other sub pages?

I read in a book that you must have this code at the top of your HTML page. Correct?
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
Should I have this code at the top of every page for my site?

Should it be sufficient to have a title and just these meta tags?
meta name="description"
meta name="keywords"

BigFrog_Computing · #2 03-31-2012, 12:00 AM

I don't think Google puts much weight on meta tags but other search engines might so it doesn't hurt. I would put them on each page.

The DOCTYPE is much more important. You should have a correct DOCTYPE on each page. Omitting it can cause rendering and validation problems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Type_Declaration

RegEdit · #3 03-31-2012, 12:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigFrog_Computing

The DOCTYPE is much more important. You should have a correct DOCTYPE on each page. Omitting it can cause rendering and validation problems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Type_Declaration

Is this a valid DOCTYPE to have on every page?
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">

tminer · #4 03-31-2012, 12:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigFrog_Computing

I don't think Google puts much weight on meta tags but other search engines might so it doesn't hurt. I would put them on each page.

The DOCTYPE is much more important. You should have a correct DOCTYPE on each page. Omitting it can cause rendering and validation problems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Type_Declaration

Big +1 These are my thoughts as well

BigFrog_Computing · #5 03-31-2012, 04:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RegEdit

Is this a valid DOCTYPE to have on every page?
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">

That one looks like it's missing pieces. I think the XML namespace and character encoding also have to be declared, but those are not in the
DOCTYPE tag. You'll probably want something like this:

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
	"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
	<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

	<title>TITLE</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

RegEdit · #6 03-31-2012, 08:40 PM

I am using MicroSoft FrontPage which is HTML. Not XHTML.

tminer · #7 04-01-2012, 04:09 AM

Ms front page adds some weird code sometimes so does ms word. I recommend xhtml transactional for most sites

Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk

Simon Yates · #8 04-12-2012, 12:29 AM

Google definately still gives weight to the description tag.

Each page should have a unique description, and the description should contain your most relavent keywords for that particular page.

The keywords tag is pretty much irrelevant today, but as BigFrog said, there are some search engines that still use the tag, so it's better to have it than not.

RegEdit · #9 04-13-2012, 09:15 AM

Thanks for the help!
BTW I am having trouble finding a direct link to Yahoo's non-commercial submission page. Please post if you know it.
Also how soon after Google lists a page will Yahoo simply discover it and add it?

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