How to use HTML Meta Tags
Meta Tags are not a magic
solution!
What are meta tags?
They are information inserted into the "head"
area of your web pages. Other than the title
tag (explained below), information in the head area
of your web pages is not seen by those viewing your
pages in browsers. Instead, meta information in this
area is used to communicate information that a human
visitor may not be concerned with.
Meta tags, for example, can tell a browser what "character
set" to use or whether a web page has self-rated
itself in terms of adult content.
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<HEAD>
<TITLE>Stamp Collecting World</TITLE>
<META name="description" content="Everything
you wanted to know about stamps, from prices
to history.">
<META name="keywords" content="stamps,
stamp collecting, stamp history, prices, stamps
for sale">
</HEAD> |
In the example above, you can see the
beginning of the page's "head" area as noted
by the HEAD tag -- it ends at the portion shown as
/HEAD.
Meta tags go in between the "opening" and
"closing" HEAD tags. Shown in the example
is a TITLE tag, then a META DESCRIPTION tag, then
a META KEYWORDS tag.
The Title Tag
The text you use in the title tag
is one of the most important
factors in how a search engine may decide to
rank your web page. In addition, all major
crawlers will use the text of your title
tag as the text they use for the title of your page
in your listings.
The Meta Description Tag
The meta description tag allows you to influence
the description of your page in the crawlers that
support the tag. The text you want to be shown as
your description goes between the quotation marks
after the "content=" portion of the tag
(generally, 200 to 250 characters may be indexed,
though only a smaller portion of this amount may be
displayed).
The Meta Keywords Tag
The meta keywords tag is sometimes useful as a way
to reinforce the terms you think a page is important
for ON THE FEW CRAWLERS THAT SUPPORT IT. For instance,
if you had a page about stamp collecting -- AND you
say the words stamp collecting at various places in
your body copy -- then mentioning the words "stamp
collecting" in the meta keywords tag MIGHT help
boost your page a bit higher for those words.
Meta Robots Tag
| <HEAD>
<TITLE>Page I Don't Want In Search Engines</TITLE>
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">
</HEAD> |
This lets you specify that a particular page should
NOT be indexed by a search engine.
To keep spiders out, simply add this text between
your head tags on each page you don't want indexed.
Read more details about HTML Meta Tags on searchenginewatch.com!
Based on http://www.searchenginewatch.com
by Danny Sullivan.
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