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What Are Meta Tags?
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Meta Tags
are a component of the invisible part of your HTML page, all
that stuff between the <head> and </head> tags.
Probably you have only seen the title tag in there, but there
are more content be hidden you never saw and these are very
useful information for search engines like Google, Inktomi,
FAST etc.
There are a number of programs named
"Robot" search the World Wide Web for documents and
compile them into search engine indexes. Some of these merely
extract titles and urls from headers. Others use a more sophisticated
method that depends on you, the HTML author to include indexing
information in the HTML file in a specific format. This indexing
information is called meta information.
The placement of these tags is important. They
should go in between the <head> and </head> tags in
your html page.
The following is a META tags example of this page:
| <html>
<body>
<head>
<TITLE>What is META Tags? Detailed information on
each META Tags element!--FullPromote.COM </TITLE>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type"content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1">
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="This
webpage shows detailed information on each META tage elements.
META tags are very important for search engines to index
webpages. A well description tag would increase success
on getting a higher position on search engines with relevant
search!">
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="META
tags, META tags help, What is META tags, Webpages Meta Tags,
Webpages Description, Webpages Title, Webpages Keywords,
Webpages META tags">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="ALL">
<META NAME="AUTHOR" CONTENT="Cynthia
Raggett">
<META NAME="COPYRIGHT" CONTENT="C.R.
2002">
</head>
Viewable content on this page!
</body>
</html> |
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<html>
The first "tag" tells
your browser that the document being read is an HTML ("Hyper
Text Markup Language") page. Once the browser spots the
HTML tag, it will apply HTML conventions to the material that
follows until it hits the ending </HTML> tag.
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Description of Meta Tags |
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| <head>...</head>
The <head> section is
very important to search engines.
Each element between <head>...</head> is named meta
tag. They are read first by visitor's browser while visiting your
webpage. The content between <head>...</head> does
not appear as part of "body" which you visitor sees.
The Internet Explorer and Netscape display your website title
on a special line at the top of the browser! Remember, never abuse
meta tags! |
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| The first "tag" in your <head>
section of great importance to the search engines is your <title>.
Your TITLE is the first tag search engines use when indexing your
page. And, when a search engine presents your document in response
to a search query, the TITLE is usually be the first line presented
to the searcher. Give your <title> a good deal of thought.
In fact, you can treat it as if it is the only tag in your HEAD
section that counts! |
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The "title" tag
follows this format:
<title>Brief description on
your webpage title</title> |
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You should make a brief description
depend on the content of your website. Almost all search engines
show your website title as the first line of your webpage while
surfers find your website on search engines!
For example, the title of this webpage looks like <title>What
is META Tags? Detailed information on each META Tags element!--FullPromote.COM</title>
BTW: you must mention the most important keywords
in your title, this will make your webpage get a higher position
while surfer searching website with the keywords! |
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The "Content-Type" tag
follows this format:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset="your
charset "> |
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The HTTP-EQUIV attribute is the name
of an http header property. The HTML spec does not really define
any fixed list of properties that must be supported, and it is
up to the viewing agent to pick and choose what information to
respond to. The difference between HTTP-EQUIV and the NAME attribute
is that HTTP-EQUIV entries are representative of http headers,
whereas the NAME attribute is more reflective of a property associated
with the page.
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset="iso-8859-1">
The CHARSET attribute, specifies the international
name of a character set. These character sets specify a mapping
and repertoire of available characters. In most cases, one would
probably be happy using "ISO 8859-1". This character
set covers most western languages and symbols.
| Main Chartset |
| Charset |
Language |
| ISO-8859-1 |
English |
| US-ASCII |
ASCII |
| ISO-2022-JP |
Murai |
| ISO-2022-JP-2 |
Ohta |
| ISO-2022-KR |
Choi |
ISO646-FR1
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French |
ISO646-DE
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German |
| EUC-JP |
Japanese |
| KOI8-R |
Cyrillic |
| SHIFT_JIS |
Kanji |
| GB2312 |
Chinese (Simple Chinese, mainland) |
| BIG5 |
Chinese (Traditional Chinese, TaiWan) |
| All
detailed charset, please click here |
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The DESCRIPTION tag follows
this format:
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION"
CONTENT="Summary of your webpage!"> |
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The description tag is used by lots
of the major search engines, like Google, Lycos, Altavista. It
is a short summary of the content of the page. The description
should include some important keywords and it must be readable.
If the description only is a list of keywords, then that means
nothing and some search engines wouldn't index your description
tag.
The description of this page looks like:
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="This
webpage shows detailed information on each META tag
elements. META tags are very important for search engines to index
webpages. A well description tag would increase success on getting
a higher position on search engines with relevant search!"> |
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The "keywords" tag follows
this format:
<meta name="keywords" content="a
list of your keywords"> |
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| Target the wrong keywords
and all your efforts will be in vain. Before
writing keywords tag, you must think what keywords people will
use to search your website and use the words you personally would
use if you were looking for a page about your topic. A good idea
is to use key phrases instead of just words on their own.
You needn't use the same keywords on each webpages, except your
webpages have approximate content. Make sure your main page is
full of keywords. It has a higher chance of being indexed than
your other pages, and it will be the only page indexed by some
engines. You can find more proper keywords through http://www.wordtracker.com
If your index page is made up of few pictures, you also must add
an "alt" attribute to your images in html code and write
more relevant content on your webpage.
Attention: Do NOT spam search engines with your keywords. Some
people wish their webpages get a higher position on search engines,
and then they repeat the same keywords again and again, even write
some keywords don't pertain to the content of their webpage. That's
bad. Search engines now are banning webpages which are trying
to trick them and even exclude those webpages.
The keywords of this page looks like:
<meta name="keywords" content="Meta
Tags, Webpage Meta Tags, Webpage Keywords, Webpage Title, Webpage
Description"> |
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| The "Generator" tag follows
this format:
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Program
Name "> |
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This is not really necessary tags.
It shows which program generates this webpage. Some search engines
can use it to count the amount of which program is more popular.
The GENERATOR tag in this page looks like
<META name="GENERATOR" content="FrontPage
5.0 "> |
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The "ROBOTS" tag follows
this format:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="Robots
meta tag">
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| Here's a meta tag that you
may never use but you should know that it exists. This tag tells
the search engines not to index a page.
The robots meta tag allows HTML authors to indicate to visiting
robots if a document may be indexed, or used to harvest more links.
No server administrator action is required.
Note that currently only a few robots implement this. The "robots"
name of the tag and the content are case insensitive.
A formal syntax for the Robots META tag content
is:
content = all | none | directives
all = "ALL"
none = "NONE"
directives = directive ["," directives]
directive = index | follow
index = "INDEX" | "NOINDEX"
follow = "FOLLOW" | "NOFOLLOW"
In this simple example
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,
NOFOLLOW">
A robot should neither index this document, nor
analyse it for links.
Generally, we agree robot to visit the whole website,
then the Robot META tag should be
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="ALL">
For more infomation, please visit Search Engine URLs Research--0EMail.net
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| The "Revisit-After" tag
follows this format:
<META NAME="Revisit-After" CONTENT="X
Days "> |
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| The Revisit META Tag is used by
search engines as a means to indicate how often a web page should
be revisited for re-indexing. This tag is supported by many search
engines and should be made use of if your content changes on a
regular basis.
Attention: Suggested for web sites that update
content on a regular basis
The Revisit Tag of this page looks like
<META NAME="Revisit-After" CONTENT="30
Days "> |
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The "author" and "copyright"
tags follow this format:
<meta name="author" content="Author">
<meta name="copyright" content="Copyright"> |
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Use these tags to insert your
copyright statement and name of author(s). They will not be indexed
by a search engine, but will provide a way for you to include this
information in a private place on your HTML pages
For example, to specify the author and copyright of a webpage, we
can use the META element as follow: <META
name="Author" content="Cynthia Raggett">
<META name="Copyright" content="C.R.
2002">
The META element shows that the author of
this document is Cynthia Raggett and C.R. reserves copyrights.
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| The "RERESH" tag follows
this format:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="SECOND;
URL=URL ADDRESS"> |
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| The refresh tag can be used to
reload the current page at a specified time or automatically redirect
the users' browser to a new URL or HTML page. The first value of
the content parameter should be a number specifying the amount of
time that will expire before the refresh occurs. A value of "0"
will cause the refresh to happen immediately, where as a value of
"10" will wait 10 seconds before refreshing.
The
second content parameter is the address of the new page. The link
can be relative, as in the case of "url=URL ADDRESS"
or it can be absolute, as in "url=http://www.fullpromote.com".
Refresh is the common method for sending a browser
to a new URL when you move or update your pages. Use a delay if
you want to give the user a brief message that your site/page
has moved before automatically forwarding them.
The Refresh Tag of this page looks like
<META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="3000;
URL=http://www.fullpromote.com/">
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| The "Window-target" tag
follows this format:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Window-target"
CONTENT="="_TOP"> |
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This tag is not really useful for
most webmasters, at least I think so. It is used for frame based
website. The frames website is not friendly for search engines'
robots. In order to easily be indexed by search engines, you'd
better build a non-frame website. That will really help you while
registering on search engines!
The target tag specifies the "named window"
of the current page, and can be used to prevent a page from appearing
inside another framed page. Usually this means that the Web browser
will force the page to go to the top frameset. |
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| Summarize |
| After reading about the "What
are META tags" offer you, I am sure you will feel that simply
submitting your site to a search engine is not enough. There are
lot of works must be done on your webpages!
Your webpage Title, Description and Meta Keywords help search
engines properly index your web pages. TITLE and DESCRIPTION are
almost always essential. KEYWORDS almost always can give you additional
help. These tags are most important in documents where the first
fifty words of your BODY text.
META tags only are one of the most important parts
in your webpage. Search engine optimization and keywords analysis
will be required if you wish a well position on search engines.
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