Everyday I am amazed by the countless number of pointless tags that are inserted into the header of a website. The largest issue with such tags is that they push a website’s content further down within the source code of the page. I will freely admit that Google and the other search engines are looking deeper into pages to find a page’s actual content, but why make the search engines work that hard? Included below are a few of the most common worthless tags inserted into the header information of a webpage and why they carry no value in a SEO campaign.
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX, FOLLOW">
The reason this value carries such little weight is that a search engine will spider a page without regardless of whether a webmaster includes such header information. As long as there are links pointing to the page, from pages that have PR, then the Google will find the pages. The only time this header tag is of value is when a webmaster wishes to stop the search engine from following a page and even in this circumstance the search engine may ignore the instructions provided. A robots.txt file is always the preferred method to exclude pages and also the method that most search engines will heed.
<META NAME="REVISIT-AFTER">
This is yet another tag that is commonly ignored by the search engines. The search spiders have their own schedules and frequency upon which they decide to visit webpages. Telling a spider to visit a site more frequently simply does not work.
<META NAME="COPYRIGHT">
Yet another meaningless tag to insert into the header information of a webpage. While I can certainly understand why a web designer or possibly even an SEO company might want to place their contact information in such a field, my advice is to resist the urge. First if the idea behind adding such a tag is to prevent others from copying the source code, then it is a waste of time, since unique content posted on a website is already copyrighted by existing U.S. and international laws. Now if the idea is to use this space as an advertisement then a company should still resist the urge. Rarely will people look at the copyright information in the source and then contact the respective web design or SEO company. This tag, as the others above simply move the page’s content further down in the source code.
There are many other worthless tags that webmasters add to a site’s pages. Next time you visit a webpage take a look at the source code and more often than not, the header information will contain unneeded tags. Please take advantage of the comment section to post tags you deem as worthless.
Brent Yorzinski is the owner of the SEO Company Agilis Marketing. Despite his young age and even younger appearance he has successfully helped hundreds of companies achieve top search rankings on Google, Yahoo, and the other major search engines.
