|
ABOUT META TAGS & KEYWORDS
First of all, don't let me
mislead you, meta tags are not the "magic bullet" that will
skyrocket your site to the top of all search page listings.
They are a tool that will help improve your standings in
search engines that use them. Use them with other marketing
strategies to garner more page views.
Another thing to remember:
most search engines look at the body of text on your pages, as
well as the page title. They take this information as higher
relevance than any meta tags. So, be sure to always have a
relevant <TITLE> on your pages, and relevant content in the
body of the page. This will improve your rankings more than
just meta tags alone.
What is a Meta Tag?
A meta tag is a hidden tag that lives in the <HEAD> of an HTML
document. It is used to supply additional information about
the HTML document. The meta tag has three possible attributes:
content, http-equiv, and name. Meta tags always provide
information in a name/value pair. The name and http-equiv
attributes provide the name information and the content provides
the value information. Meta tags do not have a closing tag.
content
This attribute will always be found in a well formed meta tag.
It provides the value information in the name/value pair. It
can be any valid string, which you should enclose in quotes.
name
This is the name portion in the name value pair. You can use
any name that you would like or that might be useful to you.
Some common names are:
- keywords - words
that identify what the page is about, usually used in search
engines
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, HTML help, meta tags,
promotion, web sites">
- description - a
short description of the page
<meta name="description" content="Boost your marketing
strategy with meta tags">
- author - the
author's name and possibly email address
<meta name="author" content="Jennifer Kyrnin">
- robots - to allow or
disallow indexing by robots
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
- copyright - the
copyright date of the page
<meta name="copyright" content="August 1999">
http-equiv
This attribute is also a name for the name/value pair, but it
is used by the server to include that name/value pair in the
MIME document header passed to the Web browser before sending
the actual HTML document. Some common http-equiv types are:
- charset
- defines the character set used in the page
<meta http-equiv="charset" content="iso-8859-1">
- expires - when the
document will be out of date
<meta http-equiv="expires" content="31 Dec 99">
- refresh - sets the
number of seconds to reload the page or reload to a new page
Reload the page every 10 seconds:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10">
Reload to a new page after 10 seconds:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10;url=http://webdesign.about.com/">
How to Use a Meta Tag
Meta tags are included in the <HEAD> of an HTML document. If
you are using meta tags to improve your standing in search
engines, then you should focus on your description and
keywords.
The description tag
Use the description tag to describe what your page is about.
Engines that use it will supply the content of this tag when
displaying a list of links. For example, if you do a search on
About.com, you will see the description listed on the search
results page.
The keywords tag
Keywords help search engines to categorize your site, and to
allow people to find your pages more quickly. However, most
search engines have limits as to how many meta keywords are
viewed. It is a good idea to review your keywords and make
sure that they are as concise and specific as possible.
|
