Index:
What
are meta tags?
To put it briefly, the meta tag is used by search engines to allow them
to more accurately list your site in their indexes. Sometimes. If you
simply produce your home page and register the URL with a search engine,
or a number of search engines, their spider programe will (eventually)
toddle along to your site to index it. Now, each of the search engines
does this slightly differently. Altavista for example will grab everything
in your document and index it, but will only show the first 250 characters
in its description. Consequently, if your site included say, 'Thanks
to:....' right at the beginning, this is what Altavista would show in
its description, and it wouldn't give the viewer any idea of what your
site actually covered. Of course, not all search engines work this way;
you should ferret around a little bit to see exactly how the popular
engines work, and certainly the major two or three such as Altavista,
Lycos, Infoseek and Excite. It therefore 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 the use of
the meta tag. (NOTE: Not all search engines use meta tags however, Altavista
does, but Excite doesn't, for example. Its not a total cure-all therefore,
but you won't miss out by putting the tag in, and it may well work well
in some cases.
(Yahoo!
Note: Yahoo is a directory rather than a search engine. Every site
submitted to Yahoo is looked at by a real person, therefore meta tags
do not play any part in getting listed with Yahoo.)
What
does a meta tag look like?
Meta tags are inserted at the top of your document, just
after the <TITLE> tags. It follows the usual form of tags, ie
<META name="something" content="something else">
but note that you don't have to have a </META> at the end of the
tag, the way that you do with something like <BOLD> bold
</BOLD>. However, make sure that each tag does not include any
line breaks, since some search engines don't like this.
What
can I include in a meta tag?
There are basically four major meta tags that you can use:
- <META
name="resource-type" content="document">
- The
only resource type that is currently in use is "document"
This is the only tag that you need to put in for indexing purposes,
but use of the others is a good idea.
- <META
name="description" content="a description of your page">
- Depending
on the search engine, this will be displayed along with the 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 and to the point. Its a good idea to keep it relevant
to your page and do not stray into other areas.
- <META
name="keywords" content="a, list, of, keywords">
- Choose
whatever keywords you think are appropriate, seperated by commas.
Remember to include synoyms, americanisms and so on. So, if you
had a page on books, you might want to include keywords such as
author, subjects, fiction, non-fiction and so on.
Yes,
there are many. Here are a couple that are used more than others:
- <META
name="copyright" content="copyright statement"
- Insert
your copyright information in this one.
- <META
HTTP-EQUIV="varname" content="data"
- This
binds the 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 the following example:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="keywords" content="car,cars"
then, as part of a GET command the server would include the word
car and cars in the HTTP response header.
- <META
HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="0; url=homepage.htm"
- This
can be used in the HEAD section of the index.html file to redirect
it to homepage.htm. The figure after content is the time in seconds
that the browser waits before moving on.
There
are a few others that you can include, such as "revisit-after"
and "rating" if you want to be really comprehensive.
There
is no need to index every single file that you've got on your site -
just choose a few representative samples. The description tag should
not simply restate the title of the page, it should describe the page.
Do NOT "Spam" keywords in your keyword meta tag. Most search
engines will penalize you for this.
Can I copy other
keywords from pages simliar to mine?
No. This
is not a good idea. It might not reflect the content on your pages,
plus this is stealing.
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, and someone searches
for them, they may find you instead and buy a product from you, rather
than them. Unfortunately, life isn't that simple. Using a copyrighted
name without permission is against the law. Of course, there is nothing
to stop you stressing the products themselves that you sell, in common
with that of your competitors, in your meta tags and you may find that
this works rather better than putting in their names anyway!
Should I use
commas or not?
Some people do, some people don't. Neither way has a proven advantage
over the other.
