Meta tag in html is not a required tag when you're creating your web pages; many pages don't use tag at all, & I must confess that I've not used it on my home page, although I put it into this page by way of demonstration. To put it briefly, meta tag is used by search engines to allow m to more accurately list your site in ir indexes. Sometimes.
If you simply produce your home page & register URL with a search engine, or a number of search engines, ir spider programmes will (eventually) toddle along to your site to index it. Now, each of search engines does this slightly differently. Altavista for example will grab everything in your document & index it, but will only show first 250 characters in its description. Consequently, if your site included say, 'Thanks to:....' right at beginning, this is what Altavista would show in its description, & it wouldn't give viewer any idea of what your site actually covered. Of course, not all search engines work this way; I'd suggest you ferret around a little bit to see exactly how popular engines work, & certainly major two or three such as Altavista, Lycos, Yahoo, Infoseek & Excite. It refore makes sense to ensure that your opening paragraph is carefully written to ensure it accurately reflects what your site covers.However, you may be able to exert a certain amount of control over how your site is indexed by use of meta tag. (I should however point out that not all search engines will use this tag - Altavista does, but Excite doesn't, for example. Its not a total cure-all refore, but you won't miss out by putting tag in, & it may well work well in some cases.
What does a meta tag look like?
You should insert meta tag element at top of your document, just after
but note that you don't have to have a at end of tag, way that you do with something like
What can I include in a meta tag?
re are basically four major meta tags that you can use:
*
o only resource type that is currently in use is "document" This is only tag that you need to put in for indexing purposes, but use of ors is a good idea.
*
o Depending on search engine, this will be displayed along with title of your page in an index. "content" could be a word, sentence or even paragraph to describe your page. Keep this reasonably short, concise & to point. However, don't be so mean with your description that its not an appropriate reflection of contents!
*
o Choose whatever keywords you think are appropriate, seperated by commas. Remember to include synoyms, americanisms & so on. So, if you had a page on cars, you might want to include keywords such as car, cars, vehicles, automobiles & so on.
*
o Content should contain eir global, local or iu (for Internal Use). To be perfectly honest, I can't quite get my head around this one; its supposed to list available resources designed to allow use to find things easily, but I still don't quite get it. My advice is to stick to "global".
Are re optional tags?
Yup, res a whole bunch of 'em. I've put in a couple of examples below:
*
o Pretty obvious what this one's for.
*
o This binds varname to an HTTP header field. An http server might use this to process a document. This one's a tad more tricky.If you included following example:
n, as part of a GET comm& server would include word car & cars in HTTP response header.
*
o This can be used in HEAD section of index.html file to redirect it to homepage.htm. figure after content is time in seconds that browser waits before moving on.
re are a few ors that you can include, such as "revisit-after" & "rating" if you want to be really comprehensive.
Or useful points.
re is no need to index every single file that you've got on your site - just choose a few representative samples.
description tag should not simply restate title of page, it should describe page.
tag can also be used in creation of dynamic documents, & when I've explored this a little bit furr, I'll add more information on this.
Where can I get more information?
What - you mean all my hard work above isn't enough for you? OK. Some sites that I've identified that might be of furr use are:
* Dictionary of meta tags & a list of RFC sources
o This is a (yuck!) frames site, but has lots of useful stuff. It gets technical quickly, so be warned.
* A meta tag builder
o Useful site which will create a set of meta tags based on information you provide. Useful if you're not sure of how to do it.
* OCLC/NCSA Metadata workshop
o This provides information on catalogue record element known as 'Dublin Core' which looks as though its going to be a very useful advance in use of little beasties.
Any software to help me create meta tags?
Yes, re are a few of se things about. One that I've been told of is at http://www.hisoftware.com/taggen.htm. I've not tried it out myself, but it looks interesting. I'm currently downloading a trial version, to see what its like. I'll let you know.
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcdot/ This site will automatically try & generate meta tags based on Dublin core for you. Seems to work well, though its a little enthusiastic about number of keywords it generates!
Questions about meta tag
Can I put my competitors name(s) in my meta tags?
Sounds like a good idea when you first think of it doesn't it? I mean, if you put your competitors names in your meta tags, & someone searches for m, y may find you instead & buy a product from you, rar than m. Unfortunately, life isn't that simple. In UK (where I'm based) re are laws against passing yourself off as anor company - I wouldn't get very far if I tried to open a shop called Harrods, for example. You'll find that putting in meta tags is probably going to be regarded in exactly same way by British courts. (Please bear in mind here that I'm not a lawyer, & I'm not giving legal advice; this is just my opinion.)
I suspect that you'll find same thing in or countries around world, & you'll end up in a whole bunch of trouble if you try & do it. Of course, re is nothing to stop you stressing products mselves that you sell, in common with that of your competitors, in your meta tags & you may find that this works rar better than putting in ir names anyway!
Should I use commas or not?
Some people do, some people don't. I've yet to be convinced that eir is best approach. For what its worth, I do.
I use AOL, & I'm having difficulty putting in meta tags. How do I do it?
Can't help with that one, I'm afraid. Since I'm not an AOL person, I can't get access to ir authoring tool, so I don't know how it works. I have had a lot of people asking me this one, so its a problem that a lot of people have - you're not alone! All I can suggest is that you contact AOL technical support & see if y can come up with something to help. However, I've also had people writing to me saying that AOL technical staff don't know answer mselves!
Since writing this I've had a very helpful email regarding this problem & am including it below; it should sort out any problems!
I noticed a query about AOL users including metatags in ir home page. If y use automated approach, y won't be able to. However, y can FTP into ir site, following instructions for advanced users, download home page from folder "myhomepage" (it will be called something like "aboutme.html"), open file in a text editor, & insert metatags to ir heart's content. y can n upload that file back into folder on aol (I think that will over-write, without having to delete original first).
Many thanks Gerry!
Should I put meta tags on every page, or just meta tags on home or index page?
Put m on every page that you create & publish. search engines will find all your pages & if you want to st& a good chance of m ranking your pages highly, you'll want to put meta tag element on each of m.
Can I write & ask you questions about meta tags?
Sure! If I can answer m for you I'd be happy to do so. I can't always provide answers, but I'll do my best. Alternatively, you might like to post m to my guestbook page, so that everyone else can see question/answer.
