Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Meta Tags
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There's a plethora of different META Tags that you can make use
of on your site. Because there are so many, it's impossible for
me to cover all of them in this article. However, I will describe
the most common ones. But let's start from the beginning, shall
we?
WHAT ARE META TAGS?
META tags are similar to standard HTML tags. However, there is
one big difference: You have to insert all META tags between the
<head> </head> tags on your page(s). META tags are used primarily
to include information about a document. The META tags will be
invisible to your site's visitors, but will be seen by browsers
and search engines.
FOR THE SEARCH ENGINES
Several of the major search engines make use of the META Keyword
tag, and virtually all of them make use of the Description tag.
These tags help the search engine spider determine the content of
your web site so that it can be indexed properly.
This is what they look like:
<META name="keywords" content="widgets, widget guide">
<META name="description" content="The ultimate guide to Widget
design!">
You can also instruct the search engine robot/spider how to index
your site using the robots META Tag. This is what it looks like:
<META name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">
What the tag above does is tell the spider not to index the page
that it appears on, and not to follow the links on that page.
Here's a complete list of attributes for the robot's tag:
index - the default, the page is added to the search engine
database
noindex - the page is not added to the search engine database
nofollow - the spider doesn't follow the links on that page
none - same as "noindex, no follow"
To use any of these attributes simply replace the
"noindex,nofollow" text in the example above with whatever you
want to use. If you need to use more than one attribute, seperate
them with a comma.
CLIENT PULL
Have you ever seen a page that automatically refreshes to another
URL after a few seconds? Did you ever wondered how it was done?
I'll tell you. The page made use of one of the http-equiv META
Tags to automatically "pull" you to a different page after a few
seconds. Here's what the code looks like:
<META http-equiv="refresh" content="1"; url="newpage.htm">
The value of content denotes how many seconds will pass before
the new page is called for. If you want it to happen as soon as a
person hits that page, then set the value to "0".
PREVENT CACHING
If you want to prevent a page being saved in your visitor's cache
you can do so by inserting the following two tags:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="0">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
Why would you want a page not to be cached? If your site is
updated frequently and you always want your visitors to see the
newest content/changes, or if you want to ensure that a new
banner is loaded each time from your server when a page is
accessed, you'll want to use the two tags above.
A quick note here on banner caching: In addition to using the two
tags above, you'll want to append random numbers at the end of
the tag calling the image. The ad serving software that I use,
Spinbox, does this for me.
RATING YOUR CONTENT
By using the rating META tag on your site, you can specify the
appropriateness of your web site for kids. The tag looks like
this:
<META name="rating" content="general">
In addition to the general rating, you can use three others: They
are:
- mature
- restricted
- 14 years
MISC. TAGS
Below I've listed several other popular tags that you may have
seen around the web.
The generator META tag is used to specify what program was used
to create your web site. Many HTML editing tools automatically
insert this so that a company can gauge their market penetration.
The tag looks like this:
<META name="generator" content="program name and version">
The author tag is used to identify the author of a page. Simply
replace "author's name" with your name or email address.
<META name="author" content="author's name">
The copyright tag identifies the individual or company that holds
the copyright to a particular page. This is what it looks like:
<META name="copyright" content="This page and all its contents
are copyright 1997-1999 by Matt Mickiewicz. All Rights
Reserved.">
Written by: Matt Mickiewicz