Chapter 12: Using Meta Tags
Improving Search Engine Results...
When a search engine finds your page, it will need to index it (that
is, add it to its searchable database) with some information off the
page. Many search engines now support the <META>
tags, which allow you to give keywords and a description to your page.
This gives you more control over how your page will show up during a
search, and will often cause more traffic to your page.
The <META> tag can be used for a few different purposes. Usually, you should place the <META> tag within the <head>
tags at the beginning of your document. To improve search engine
results, we will use two specific attributes within the meta tag. Here
is an example:
<meta name="description" content="description of page goes here">
<meta name="keywords" content="keywords go here">
When a user searches a search engine that supports meta tags and they
query a phrase (search for a keyword) related to your page, your page
may show up in the list of results. Your page will be listed by its
Title, and then underneath its title will be the first hundred or so
characters of the description you placed in the meta tag. It is
recommended that you keep the description content to no more than 200
characters. Although the keywords content is not seen by the user when
searched, it is recommended to keep this less than 1000 characters,
because if you have more the search engine will either ignore the rest
or delete you from the index. (Spaces are not needed to separate
keywords)
Example of a real-life meta situation...
<html>
<head>
<title>Little Maria's Sound Page</title>
<meta name="description" content="Maria's Collection of Cool Sound files for you to use in your home page!">
<meta name="keywords" content="music sounds midi wav joe collection">
</head>
<body>
Page Goes Here
</body>
</html>
Meta tags are not visible in the web page unless the user selects to 'view source'.
Auto-refreshing...
Automatic Refreshing is supported by many newer versions of Internet explorer (IE), FireFox etc. This also uses a modified
form of the <META>
tag. Auto refreshing means that once one page loads, you can set a
certain number of seconds and then the browser will load another page
automatically. The basic structure is as follows:
<meta http-equiv=REFRESH CONTENT=x_seconds;url="http://www.yourdomain.com/pagetosendto.html">
The URL is the page you want it to refresh to, CONTENT is the number of seconds you want it to wait before refreshing, and http-equiv=REFRESH
just tells it that this is the refresh meta tag. For example, if you
wanted the page to refresh to golden-way-media.com after 5 seconds it would be
as follows:
<meta http-equiv=REFRESH CONTENT=5;URL="http://www.golden-way-media.com/">
Go To Chapter 13
Golden Way Media