Meta Tag Force Page Refresh - Good or Bad?
-
I had recently come across a meta tag that could cause a auto refresh on a users browser when implemented. I have been using it for a redesign and was curious if there could be any negative effects for using it, here is the code:
All input is appreciated.
Ciao,
Todd Richard
-
I don't believe that tag causes an auto-refresh. Rather, it is used in combination with an auto-refresh to make sure that nothing is cached in the user's browser, which ensures that the entire page updated during the refresh.
If I recall correctly, sending "no-cache" info in the http header is a better practice that using a meta tag. To quote from http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/#META:
"Meta tags are easy to use, but aren’t very effective. That’s because they’re only honored by a few browser caches, not proxy caches (which almost never read the HTML in the document). While it may be tempting to put a Pragma: no-cache meta tag into a Web page, it won’t necessarily cause it to be kept fresh."
I couldn't say whether this would affect your page in terms of SEO, but I also don't think there's a reason to use the pragma tag anymore, so in my opinion, it's moot.
-
Hi Todd,
Using the Pragma no-cache tag means that no cached content from that page will be used when a user next accesses the page; the request will go back to the origin server instead. It's useful when you have a frequently-updated page that you don't want users to end up seeing older versions of. It's generally considered to be a bit of an outdated tag - you may want to explore using your HTTP headers to expire content instead - but won't hurt you with the search engines (or prevent the Cached version of your page from showing up in the SERPs). Hope that helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is it ok to repeat a (focus) keyword used on a previous page, on a new page?
I am cataloguing the pages on our website in terms of which focus keyword has been used with the page. I've noticed that some pages repeated the same keyword / term. I've heard that it's not really good practice, as it's like telling google conflicting information, as the pages with the same keywords will be competing against each other. Is this correct information? If so, is the alternative to use various long-winded keywords instead? If not, meaning it's ok to repeat the keyword on different pages, is there a maximum recommended number of times that we want to repeat the word? Still new-ish to SEO, so any help is much appreciated! V.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vitzz1 -
Can a duplicate page referencing the original page on another domain in another country using the 'canonical link' still get indexed locally?
Hi I wonder if anyone could help me on a canonical link query/indexing issue. I have given an overview, intended solution and question below. Any advice on this query will be much appreciated. Overview: I have a client who has a .com domain that includes blog content intended for the US market using the correct lang tags. The client also has a .co.uk site without a blog but looking at creating one. As the target keywords and content are relevant across both UK and US markets and not to duplicate work the client has asked would it be worthwhile centralising the blog or provide any other efficient blog site structure recommendations. Suggested solution: As the domain authority (DA) on the .com/.co.uk sites are in the 60+ it would risky moving domains/subdomain at this stage and would be a waste not to utilise the DAs that have built up on both sites. I have suggested they keep both sites and share the same content between them using a content curated WP plugin and using the 'canonical link' to reference the original source (US or UK) - so not to get duplicate content issues. My question: Let's say I'm a potential customer in the UK and i'm searching using a keyword phrase that the content that answers my query is on both the UK and US site although the US content is the original source.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonRayner
Will the US or UK version blog appear in UK SERPs? My gut is the UK blog will as Google will try and serve me the most appropriate version of the content and as I'm in the UK it will be this version, even though I have identified the US source using the canonical link?2 -
Best way to link to 1000 city landing pages from index page in a way that google follows/crawls these links (without building country pages)?
Currently we have direct links to the top 100 country and city landing pages on our index page of the root domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
I would like to add in the index page for each country a link "more cities" which then loads dynamically (without reloading the page and without redirecting to another page) a list with links to all cities in this country.
I do not want to dillute "link juice" to my top 100 country and city landing pages on the index page.
I would still like google to be able to crawl and follow these links to cities that I load dynamically later. In this particular case typical site hiearchy of country pages with links to all cities is not an option. Any recommendations on how best to implement?0 -
How good or bad is this for SEO?
I will try to make this as clear as possible. We represent the yellow pages - www.visalietuva.lt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FCRMediaLietuva
For every single company that is listed we have Creditworthiness - that helps to find information about their payment history and their business status. It's pretty useful. An example could be found here: http://www.visalietuva.lt/en/company/dizrega-uab/creditworthiness Some companies that are proud of their result started putting Iframe on their pages:
http://dizrega.lt/lt/kontaktai/firmos-rodikliai We noticed this on Google Webmasters, when new links started to appear.
So we are not sure if this is good for SEO? Of course this is good for our Google Analytics:))
If this is good, maybe we should send offer for our clients, that we can help to put iframe like this for free, for people who are not able to do it themselves. Your opinions please!0 -
I have 2 keywords I want to target, should I make one page for both keywords or two separate pages?
My team sells sailboats and pontoon boats all over the country. So while they are both boats, the target market is two different types of people... I want to make a landing page for each state so if someone types in "Pontoon Boats for sale in Michigan" or "Pontoon boats for sale in Tennessee," my website will come up. But I also want to come up if someone is searching for sailboats for sale in Michigan or Tennessee (or any other state for that matter). So my question is, should I make 1 page for each state that targets both pontoon boats and sailboats (total of 50 landing pages), or should I make two pages for each state, one targeting pontoon boats and the other sailboats (total of 100 landing pages). My team has seen success targeting each state individually for a single keyword, but have not had a situation like this come up yet.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanMaster0 -
Meta NOINDEX and links into the pages?
If I have internal links pointing to pages that are META NO INDEX, will Google still index them? Or does that only apply to pages that are linked to from an external domain? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Merging blog post tags within static page - Rel = Canonical?
As a blogger, I use a combination of categories and tags in order to organize my content. I do index tags because they've been very powerful for SEO purposes, but there are certain keywords in which I'd like to be able to create an entirely separate static page with the tagged posts merged onto it. So in other words, this is what I'd like the landing page to be: www.website.com/keyword as opposed to www.website.com/tags/keyword Because of this, I'm uncertain what I need to do with that tag page. With this, I would assume that www.website.com/tags/keywords needs to be indexed, but what would be the wise thing to do? Do I place a rel=canonical on www.website.com/tags/keyword to the static page? Do I do a simple re-direct? Do I just leave it indexed? Will it dilute my desired landing page? Would appreciate all comments and thoughts. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | longview0 -
Not sure why Home page is outranked by less optimized internal pages.
We launched our website just three weeks ago, and one of our primary keyword phrases is "e-business consultants". Here's what I don't get. Our home page is the page most optimized around this search phrase. Using SEOmoz On-Page Optimization tool, the home page scores an "A". And yet it doesn't rank in the top 50 on Google Canada, although two other INTERNAL pages - www.ebusinessconsultants.ca/about/consulting-team/ & /www.ebusinessconsultants.ca/about/consulting-approach/ - rank 5 & 6 on Google Canada, even though they only score a grade "C" for on-page optimization for this keyword phrase. I've always understood that the home page is the most powerful page. Why are these others outranking it? I checked the crawl and Google Webmaster, and there is no obvious problem on the home page. Is this because the site is so new? It goes against all previous experience I've had in similar situation. Any guidance/ insight would be highly appreciated!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | axelk0