The <META> tag is the least understood and second most used tag inside the head tag. It is used to include additional information about a document and can be used to pass additional information to the browser. There is no ending tag for the <META> tag. Also, there can be several <META> tags in a document.
The attributes of the meta tag are NAME,
CONTENT, and HTTP-EQUIV. It is recommended that you include a modest number of keywords(3
to 5) as the value of the CONTENT attribute.
If someone is searching for a particular topic, your page may be
returned if one or more of your keywords match their search request. Also, do not abuse the meta tag by making
the number of keywords a ridiculous length.
For example, someone who has a Web page about
Woodworking might include the following:
<HEAD>
<META NAME = “keywords”
CONTENT = “woodworking, cabinetmaking,
handmade furniture”>
</HEAD>
Document descriptions may also be
used. The above could be coded as
follows:
<HEAD>
<META NAME = “description”
CONTENT = “Make your own cabinets and,
other handmade furniture. It’s
is easy.”>
</HEAD>
Sometimes a search engine will return a
highly ranked document that makes no sense at all and you can’t figure out why
it was picked up. When this happens,
the search engine may have been responding to text that is hidden on the Web
page in the meta tag. Recall
that the information in the meta tag is not viewed in the web browser, but can
be used by a search engine when it describes the documents in its hit list.
Note that most web browsers look for a meta
description when they display a brief document summary. “When no meta description is available, a
summary is made from the first few visible words in the document. Words in the meta keyword list can be
heavily weighted as important documents indexes, so a keyword list can
influence the ranking of a document.” W. Lehnert, Internet 101.
Meta tag Exercises
View several meta tags in HTML source code and become comfortable with what you see and learn from this tag. When you feel comfortable with this concept, use meta tags in your HTML documents…just remember to use keywords properly.
Search your favorite search engine for more
information on the meta tag. For
example, go to:
www.searchengineworld.com/glossary/meta_tag.htm
Additional meta tags:
CHAR SET tag is used to describe the
document language and character set.
AUTHOR meta tag is the creator of the document.
GENERATOR meta tag is the software
used to generate the page.
HTTP REFRESH meta tag is used to request
that the page be refreshed.
The HTTP-EQUIV tag can sometimes be
used to issue some HTTP commands.
The HTTP-EQUIV attribute tags are used
to manipulate the browser into performing some action. The most popular of these is probably the refresh
meta tag. Inserting the following
code in the header of your HTML document results in the browser opening the
Coca-Cola Web site after 5 seconds.
<META HTTP-EQUVI=”refresh”
CONTENT=”5;
URL=HTTP://WWW.COKE.COM”>
The refresh tag is often used to
redirect an old Web site to a new location or to create an entry page for a Web
site. So, you use this to configure a
Web page to load a new URL automatically after a defined number of seconds
pass. This is so cool!
You can use several marketing strategies to increase
traffic on your Web site. Among them
are registering your site with the popular search engines, trading or buying
banner ad space and including meta(or higher level)tags in your
HTML documents.
In review:
The header of a Web page contains meta tags. Keyword meta tags help search engines index
pages. Well-designed meta tags can
increase traffic to a Web site because the site is indexed higher
in searches for particular topics.
Some uses for meta tags include describing a page,
identifying an author, and forwarding(refreshing) one Web page to another.