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Meta
tags are used to communicate information
about the web page. There are several different
meta tags that are used for various purposes.
We will discuss three meta tags in this
document: The author, description, and keyword
meta tags.
Meta
tags do not have a closing tag, like most
other tags. This is because the meta tag
doesn't describe, or cause formatting to
the text in a document. Rather it describes
information about the document, or information
that causes the browser to perform an action
on a document.
The
author meta tag is used to indicate who
the author of the web page is.
The
description meta tag has an important use
when it comes to some search engines. There
are many search engines that will index
your site automatically. Some of these search
engines allow for a short description to
be placed in their web page. If the search
engines is looking in your web page for
a description meta tag, it will use this
description in the search index.
The
keyword meta tag has another important use
when it comes to some search engines. When
these auto robot search engines index your
site, some will look for a keyword meta
tag to use as index words. When someone
uses their search engine and searches on
a word that is in your keyword meta tame
list, your site will be included in the
output search results.
Each
keyword should be separated by a comma.
Capitalization is not important in the keyword
meta tag.
These
meta tags are not required in your document,
and should only be used if you wish to help
out the search engines or provide comments.
The following example shows how these tags
are coded:
<html>
<head>
<title>This is the Title of
my Web Page</title>
<meta
name="Author"
content="Your name goes here">
<meta
name="Description"
content="My site is one of the
best">
<meta
name="Keywords"
content="host,my,site,personal,web,page">
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html> |
Many
Meta Tags are useful for many different
purposes. Meta Tags became a
Catch-all for identifying information with
no particular purpose (with exception to
a very few select meta tags.
Many
vendors of software that generates HTML
will make use of their own custom Meta Tags
to identify different pieces of information
about the document. In these
cases, the meta tags are only useful to
that particular software.
Too
many meta tags can be detrimental to your
site being indexed appropriately by the
Search Engines. Use Meta Tags Sparingly.
Starting
and Ending an HTML Document
Heading and Title Tags
Meta Tags (Author, Description and Keywords)
Body Tag
Background Image
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