Meta Tags Tutor
What we'll do is make sure you have solid keywords and description What are meta tags?
Meta tags are bits of extra information that you can add to your web pages. This information can range from the more popular keywords and description to the more mundane robots and copyright.
I heard meta tags will help my page rank in search engines.
Yes and no. Actually, more no than yes. In the earlier days of the Internet keywords were very important to early search engines. As the web grew and more people tried to get noticed, the keyword system got a little abused. Most search engines started using other criteria as well in their ranking system. In most search engines, keywords play a part, but not a huge part when determining relevance.
meta tags so at least you're covered in that area. We'll also discuss a couple other things that you can do to help your ranking in search engines. No guarantees though. I realize there are those that promise the world when it comes to search engine rankings, but I don't want to give you any false hopes... there is no golden key to a magic kingdom.
There are two types of meta tags... name and http-equiv. In the next section we'll dig into some name type meta tags.
Meta Tag Primer - part 2
meta - name
The basic structure of the name type meta tag is as follows. You'll note each is made up of name and content.
<meta name="blah" content="blah blah blah">
Meta tags go in the head section of your document...
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
<meta name="blah" content="blah blah blah">
</head>
<body>
Bulk of my page here
</body>
</html>
You can insert multiple meta tags...
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
<meta name="blah1" content="blah blah">
<meta name="blah2" content="blah blah blah blah">
<meta name="blah3" content="blah blah blah">
</head>
<body>
Bulk of my page here
</body>
</html>
So far pretty simple, eh? Well, surprise... it's doesn't get much more difficult than that. We're going to look at description, keywords and robots...
name="description"
Fairly self-explanatory. A description of the page or site. In your description use words and phrases that you would like to show up in a search. For example, if your site is about widgets, and you would like your site to (hopefully) show up when someone searches for "widgets", your description meta tag might look something like this...
<meta name="description" content="Joe's Widget Company - your complete widget headquarters. All sizes and colors of widgets from extra small to extra woofy. Online ordering and overnight delivery available.">
You can use one generic description for every page in your site, or you can write a different one for every page. In some search engines it is this description that shows up under the page title in the results. This is how your widget page might turn up in some search engines (assuming your page title is Joe's Widget Company)...
Joe's Widget Company
Joe's Widget Company - your complete widget headquarters. All sizes and colors of widgets from extra small to extra woofy. Online ordering and overnight delivery available.
URL: http://www.joeswidgets.com/
name="keywords"
Basically just a comma-delimited list of keywords and short phrases...
<meta name="keywords" content="widgets, widget holders, ergonomic aids, tools, braces, Joe's Widget Company, widgomatic">
Now, don't get too crazy with keyword and description meta tags. The search engines have gotten pretty smart lately and they have ways to weed out overdone keyword lists. Whatever weight they give to keywords and descriptions will be diminished if you did something like this...
<meta name="description" content="Lots of widgets and more widgets and widgets for widgets, not to mention widgets and the worlds biggest collection of widgets. Joe's Widgets are the widget of widgets.">
<meta name="keywords" content="widgets, widgets, widgets, big widgets, small widgets, red widgets, blue widgets, yellow widgets, tall widgets, widgets widgets,">
If you overload your meta tags with the hope of ranking higher, you might instead find yourself penalized and your page might be tossed out of the index all together. So, don't be silly about it.
One minor item of note that you may want to consider when putting together a list of keywords is misspelled words. You might also want to use the word "wiget" or "wigits" in your keyword list. You never know if some well meaning bumpkin accidently misspells widget. This way you might be the number one widget salesman to show up in his search! It certainly doesn't do any harm and you might pick up a few visits because of it.
name="robots"
A search engine uses a computer program find and index (catalog) web pages. It "moves" from one page to the next by following links. This type of computer program is called a "spider" or a "robot". These robots can be told what links to follow or not follow, pages to index or not index. One method is to use a robots.txt file in your root home page directory. Another common method (assuming you wanted to control the robot) is to make use of the robots meta tag in individual pages...
<meta name="robots" content="all none index noindex follow nofollow">
( FYI - Whenever you see a list of items separated by a pipe -> , the pipe means "or". You (normally) may choose one from the list of items. )
Let's go through each item and describe what it does...
|
all |
This is the default. It means that the spiders (or robots) can index this page and follow all links on this page. If you want robots to index everything and follow everything, then just skip the robots tag. The robots will index and follow everything automatically. To "index" means to place in their database so it is available for searches. |
|
none |
none instructs the browser to basically ignore the page. Don't index anything and don't follow any links. |
|
index |
The robot should index the page. |
|
noindex |
The robot may not index the page, but it is welcome to follow links on the page. |
|
follow |
The robot may follow links on the page. |
|
nofollow |
The robot is welcome to index the page, but may not follow any links on the page. |
If you're thinking there seems to be a bit of overlap in those instructions, you're right. For the most part, all you need to worry about are none, noindex and nofollow, or just leave that meta tag out for the robot to index and follow everything.
A few examples...
How do I prevent the spiders from indexing my page?
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
How do I prevent the spiders from following links on my page?
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
How do I get a search engine to completely ignore my page?
<meta name="robots" content="none">
What do I do if I want the search engines to index the page and follow all links?
Don't add a robots meta tag. The spiders will index and follow everything automatically.
One more thing about the robots meta tag, or rather about robots in general. The spider programs used by search engines are usually very well behaved and they obey what's in the robots meta tag or in the robots.txt file. Some spiders however, such as those used in email harvesters are bad robots. They could care less what you specify and they index and follow whatever they want. For the most part they don't do any harm... they just collect information (usually email addresses) for whoever is running the spider. Then those email addresses are usually zipped up or put on a CD and sold to some schmuck who will then turn around and attempt to sell you (by email) some program where you can lose a bunch of weight while you get rich quick or something. A nuisance yes, but it's a minor nuisance.
How can I prevent a bad robot from getting to what's on my web page?
Don't put your page on the Internet?
Meta Tag Primer - part 3
meta - http-equiv
First, a bit of background. When you click on a link, that sends a request for a file to a server. That request is made using a particular protocol (format) called HTTP (Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol). The server checks to see if it has the file, then sends back a block of information plus the file. That extra block of information is the "header" block. It can contain extra information for the browser. By using a http-equiv meta tag, you can sort of fake out the browser and make it believe it's getting extra information from the server. Only rather than from the server, it's coming from you in the form of a meta tag. There are a few http-equiv meta tags, but only one that is worth learning about...
http-equiv="refresh"
This refreshes (or reloads) the browser. It can reload with the same page, or with a different page. It can reload immediately, or after a time interval. The basic syntax is as follows...
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url=http://www.newsite.com/">
5 is the number of seconds to wait before refreshing, and http://www.newsite.com/ is the new URL. This can be a full or relative URL.
|
What's a full or relative URL?
A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of a file on the WWW. A full URL is the complete address such as:
http://www.pagetutor.com/pagetutor/tables/lesson01.html
A partial, or relative URL is the address relative to another page in the same domain. For example:
lesson01.html
or
tables/lesson01.html
or
../tables/lesson01.html
If this is still confusing to you, you need to go back and get some remedial HTML lessons. |
Here is a working example that will sling you through a few pages automatically, then bring you back here.
>>> GO >>>
Pretty cool, don't you think? If you move one of your pages and would like to automatically redirect your visitor to the new page, this is one way to do it.
There are other http-equiv meta tags that you might hear about... expires, pragma, window-target, etc. We'll skip these for a very good reason... they don't work! Or, at best, they'll only work for a very small portion of your visitors. They're not worth bothering with... trust me.
There are other NAME type meta tags, such as author, copyright, generator, etc, etc, but those aren't really of any use to you either. In addition, you can make up meta tags for your own use...
<meta name="Daniel_Boone" content="King of the wild frontier.">
The meta tags we've gone over have a solid use, and they work nearly universally. Unless you have a specific need, there is no reason to spend time messing with all the various other meta tags.
Develop your description and keywords tags, use the robots meta tag only where absolutely necessary (you should really just let the robots do their thing) and use the http-equiv="refresh" meta tag if you want to re-direct visitors.
Again, don't get too crazy with your description and keyword list. Different search engines use different criteria, but one thing is almost universally assured... abuse the keyword and description meta tags and you'll likely be penalized.
I said earlier that we would touch on strategies for improving your web site's ranking in search engines. Over the years I've noticed a few basic principles that you should keep in mind when putting together your pages...
- Your document's TITLE is probably the most important criteria in most search engine rankings. Choose it carefully. It should contain your most important keywords without being too wordy.
- Links. The number of links pointing to your page is of great significance when search engines rank one site against another. The idea is that a site with more links pointing to it contains more desirable content. Makes perfect sense. It's tempting to say the key to getting linked to is to exchange links or get people to link to you. Many many people have gone down that "cart before the horse" path and haven't fared very well. How to get links you ask?? Simple. Have desirable content. Or to put it another way - HAVE DESIRABLE CONTENT.
If you have desirable content, people will link to what you have. If you have a small amount of poorly put together information, people won't link to you to save your life. Develop great content. Make a USEFUL site. Make an INFORMATIVE site. Make a FUNNY site if you have to. Make your site WORTHY of linking to. Then, and only then will you see more and more people linking to you.
How many people are linking to you? Type in your URL:
This search uses Javascript and yours seems to be disabled :-(
- Use ALT attributes in your image tags. Imagine the image was not there. The ALT attribute is what the search engine sees. If your page is about widgets, and you have a lot of pictures of widgets, the search engines will miss them all. Use appropriate ATL attributes such as alt="Red Widget", alt="Super Widget", alt="Widget Accessories", etc.
- Submit your sites to the big search engines by hand. Don't use those Super Site Blaster programs and services (the ones that promise to submit your site to 1000 search engines and directories for $99.95). Using one of those will accomplish three things... 1) it will make you several dollars lighter, 2) you'll be submitted to a bunch of useless or defunct link sites, and most importantly, 3) legitimate search engines might penalize you. Just hand submit your front page to a half dozen of the bigger search engines. Their spiders will crawl through your site and index the rest of the pages.
- Don't use phony "doorway" pages that load up on keywords and redirect the visitor to your main page. While this might work sometimes with a few minor search engines, believe that search engine programmers are smart enough to detect those sorts of shenanigans and will likely toss your pages right out of the index. Your best bet is to remain completely above board and leave the stupid search engine tricks to someone else ;-)
- Promote your site consistently, creatively and responsibly. DON'T buy one of those CD's full of email addresses and spam three million people. You won't get much of a response and you might get your ISP or web host a little uppity. Participate in web rings if you wish. Offer something of value for free.
And that ladies and gentlemen, is all I have to say about META tags 
bravenet.com
