Meta tags: How many is "too much"?

[Bryn]

Everyone knows that these things are helpful for your site/forum to get out there but, is it really a problem of having too many of them? And if so, how many of them should you really have? I had heard before that lots of meta tags may pose a problem of any site/forum being found and that webmasters/forum owners are advised to keep to a minimum.

To start off, I have almost twenty meta tags for mine. Might consider cutting it down a little, and to keep the ones that are more relevant for my forum.

 

[DylRicho]

I use seventeen of them, though most of them are Open Graph meta tags.

I haven't heard of any performance issues involving meta tags, but I do know that Google doesn't care about your meta keywords.

 

[Bryn]

but I do know that Google doesn't care about your meta keywords.

Oh, is that a fact? 🙁 What about for other search engines if you know?

 

[DylRicho]

but I do know that Google doesn't care about your meta keywords.

Oh, is that a fact? 🙁 What about for other search engines if you know?

It's because so many people were abusing the system. Other search engines do care.

 

[Bryn]

Ah, I see. Thank you for the clarification.

 

[DylRicho]

Ah, I see. Thank you for the clarification.

No worries. It's worth keeping in for the sake of the other search engines, but just note that if you're focusing to optimize them specifically for Google, that it's not worth the time.

As other examples, Bing and DuckDuckGo do read the keywords tag. 🙂

 

[Page]

having one is to low and I say around 10 is an far far amount. Yet then I never know how much you can use regards that.

 

[DylRicho]

having one is to low and I say around 10 is an far far amount. Yet then I never know how much you can use regards that.

I'd much rather have 250 meta tags, than 20 HTTP requests.

 

[Page]

I'd much rather have 250 meta tags, than 20 HTTP requests.

all up yes, but what about each page?

 

[DylRicho]

I'd much rather have 250 meta tags, than 20 HTTP requests.

all up yes, but what about each page?

What about each page?

 

[Page]

What about each page?

Each page has meta tags, And depends what the page is about you pick the right wards for it. So what's an good amount of meta tags for each web page

 

[Azareal]

I'd much rather have 250 meta tags, than 20 HTTP requests.

Eh, more traffic is good in my book. And meta tags are largely useless these days, and kinda hard to do for things like forums as you can't trust that users will pick the right thing or that the software will do so.

 

[DylRicho]

Each page has meta tags, And depends what the page is about you pick the right wards for it. So what's an good amount of meta tags for each web page

Ideally, as little as possible, but there's no real need to stress over how many you have. They all serve a different purpose; some are required by certain APIs (e.g. Facebook or Twitter), and others can be reused by said APIs. There's no real general rule to follow because it depends on the level of integrability that you want to achieve. Providing you don't have hundreds of them, I wouldn't worry.

Eh, more traffic is good in my book. And meta tags are largely useless these days, and kinda hard to do for things like forums as you can't trust that users will pick the right thing or that the software will do so.

Traffic is always best, though I'm not sure what kind of comparison you're drawing from my statement with that one. Could you elaborate?

 

[Azareal]

Traffic is always best, though I'm not sure what kind of comparison you're drawing from my statement with that one. Could you elaborate?

It sounded like you were contrasting 20 requests to 1 lol

 

[DylRicho]

Traffic is always best, though I'm not sure what kind of comparison you're drawing from my statement with that one. Could you elaborate?

It sounded like you were contrasting 20 requests to 1 lol

HTTP requests, being the number of resources (styles, scripts and images) required for one pageview, by one end user.

 

[Azareal]

HTTP requests, being the number of resources (styles, scripts and images) required for one pageview, by one end user.

With HTTP/2, I think a lot of that problem might go away, as multiple things will be transferred over one connection.

If it's bots using up bandwidth, I generally don't worry about that, as a CDN handles it for me.

 

[DylRicho]

HTTP requests, being the number of resources (styles, scripts and images) required for one pageview, by one end user.

With HTTP/2, I think a lot of that problem might go away, as multiple things will be transferred over one connection.

If it's bots using up bandwidth, I generally don't worry about that, as a CDN handles it for me.

I haven't really done much testing with HTTP/2. I'm already getting 99% on the performance metric for Google's Lighthouse tests, and that's without caching, nor fixing my render blocking issues (the theme is still under construction).