Meta Tags

							Meta Tags


What are Meta Tags And How Are
They Best Used?
What?

   The META tag was created as a sort
    of "catch-all." These tags allow
    Webmasters to issue an unlimited
    variety of commands, or to provide
    information to a browser, search
    engine, or automated program (i.e.,
    robot).
Search Engines and Meta elements

   Search Engines help people find
    web sites
   Usually they catalog sites by
    following links from page to page
    and saving identification and
    classification information for each
    page.
Included Where?

   Meta tags are contained in the
    HEAD section near the top of the
    page.
   They are not visible to the user
   If not placed in this section they will
    not be read by the search engines.
The Meta element….
   Search engines catalog pages by reading
    content in each page’s meta elements,
    which specifies information about a
    document.

   Two important attributes:
      name = identifies type of meta element

      content = the information search
       engines use to catalog pages
Example of the meta Element -
Keyword
<meta name = “keywords” Content =
 “mask, fins, snorkel, lessons, travel,
 equipment service, equipment
 rental, tanks, regulators Berry” />

The “keywords” element provides the search engines a list of
  words that describe a page. These words are compared
  with words in a search request. How good are you at
  picking key words users will use to search?

Including meta elements and their content information can
   draw viewers to your site.
Remember…

   Although you can list as many
    keywords as you like, most search
    engines will not read more than
    about 1000 characters.
   Include your most important
    keywords at the start of the tag.
    Don’t forget…

   They're not displayed to the end user unless
    you view the source code of the page.
   The meta keyword tag is designed to tell the
    search engine what keywords are important
    to your page, and thereby how people should
    be able to find you when they search.
Example of Meta Element -
Description
<meta name = “description” content = “This website
  will provide you information on Berry Dive Center
  and how we can provide all your needs in Scuba
  Diving.” />

   The content of this type of meta element provides a
    three to four line description of the page, written in
    sentence form. Just a short summary.
   Search Engines also use this description to catalog
    your site and sometimes display this information as
    part of the search results.
Page Generator

   This is not necessary but lists the
    program you used to write your
    pages.

<meta name=“generator”
 content=“Notepad++”>
Author and Copyright

Not necessary but an example:

<meta name=“author” content=“Pam
 Kouris”>

<meta name=“copyright”
 content=“Pam Kouris 2009”>
Refresh
 Using this tag you can have your page automatically
  refresh itself to the most current version or change
  another page entirely after a set number of seconds
  (called ‘client pull’)
 Useful if you’ve moved a page to a new url and want
  any visitors to the old address to quietly sent to a
  new location.
<meta http-equiv=“refresh” content=5;
  url=newurl.html”>

(5 = the number of seconds to wait before changing to
   a new page)
Meta expires command…
   Gives the users’ browsers a date, after
    which the page is deleted from the
    browsers cache, and must be downloaded
    again.
   This is useful if you want to make sure your
    visitors are reading the most current
    version of a page.
   <meta name=“expires” content=“13 March
    2009”>
Robots
   You can tell engines which ones are
    welcome and which can get lost. The
    following code allows all crawlers in. (you
    will have to do some research to find the
    name of the search engine’s ‘bot’ if you
    wanted it excluded)

<meta name=“robots” content=“all”>
    Should I put meta tags on every
    page, or just meta tags on the
    home or index page?
   Put them on every page that you create
    and publish. The search engines will find all
    your pages and if you want to stand a good
    chance of them ranking your pages highly,
    you'll want to put the meta tag element on
    each of them
Example:
<head>
 <title> My Web Page</title>
   <meta name=“description” content=“Everything
  you wanted to know about me.”>
    <meta name=“keywords” content=“human, arms,
  teeth, hair, breaths, eats, sleeps, female.”>
  <meta name=“generator” content=“Notepad++”>
  <meta name=“author” content=“Pam Kouris”>
  <meta name=“copyright” content=“Pam Kouris
  2009”>
</head>
Search Engine Quiz…

   http://websearch.about.com/library
    /quizzes/search_engine_quiz/blsear
    chenginequiz.htm