HTML Code MiniChapter 15: 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. (Commas are not
needed to separate keywords)
Example of a real-life meta situation...
<html>
<head>
<title>Little Joe's Sound Page</title>
<meta name="description" content="Joe'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 Netscape and Microsoft Internet
Explorer among other popular web browsers. 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.yourhost.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 davesite.com
after 5 seconds it would be as follows:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;URL=http//www.davesite.com">
Try it Yourself! In the Box below, type the following HTML code,
then click "Check it Out!" The HTML document you made will be
displayed in your browser. You may wish to change the words within
the tags just to try it out.
Try typing this:
<html>
<head><title>Pratice Meta Tags</title>
<meta name="description" content="Joe's Collection of Cool Sound
files for you to use in your home page!">
<meta name="keywords" content="music sounds midi wav joe
collection">
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5; URL=http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/chap15.shtml">
</head>
<body>
This page Copyright © Little Joe's Pages & davesite.com.
</body>
</html>"5; URL=http://www.davesite.com/">
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