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Mike Tuck
Mike is an educator, freelance writer, and self-taught PC user who
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Practical Web Design - Top 15 META Tag Tricks
When you write a Web document, you can get by without META tags if you have to. You can simply leave your <HEAD> section blank (except for the TITLE) and go straight for the content, like this:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>My Magnificent Web Page</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
...and go from there. The document will display nicely and the boss will gasp in wonderment at the glorious Web document you've created. So why even worry with META tags? After all, it's not like they show up or anything.
Well, let's find out.
According to Webopedia, a META tag:
"provides information about a Web page. Unlike normal HTML tags, META tags do not affect how the page is displayed. Instead, they provide information such as who created the page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the page's content. Many search engines use this information when building their indices."
And according to the World Wide Web Consortium,
"Meta data is machine understandable information for the Web."
Luckily, we don't have to understand the ins and outs of META tags to use them in our pages.
Note that META tags are "singletons"; they don't require the use of closing tags like </META>. They have to go within your <HEAD></HEAD> section to function.
Keywords and Descriptions
The most important META tags give search engines something to latch onto when they try to index your page. The two META tags that perform this function are KEYWORD and DESCRIPTION tags. The KEYWORD tag provides keywords that search engine users put in to find pages like yours. The META tag for this page might look something like this:
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="META tags, Practical Web
Design, HTML, tips, tricks, SitePoint, Michael Tuck">
(Note: as pointed out by a vigilant SitePoint Forums member, if you wish to adhere to strict XHTML standards, your tag would look like this:
<meta name="keywords" content="META tags, Practical Web
Design, HTML, tips, tricks, SitePoint, Michael Tuck"/>
Note that the attribute NAME defines what kind of META tag is being used, and the CONTENT attribute gives a list of key words and phrases that describe your page. Also note how quotation marks are used.
You should put some serious effort into deciding exactly what keywords your page will use. Scour a thesaurus, brainstorm with friends or colleagues, and make wise decisions. Put the most useful words first. These keywords will go a long way in deciding where your site ends up in a search engine's results listing.
The DESCRIPTION subtag is very similar, except that instead of listing key words and phrases, you provide a short, pithy description of your page. This description will be used by search engines to describe the page, so you should put some time and thought into crafting the perfect description for your Web page. This page might have a DESCRIPTION tag something like:
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Column One of SitePoint's
Practical Web Design series; a discussion of META tags
and how they're used in Web documents. Written by
Michael Tuck and published by SitePoint.com, your
source for Web design information.">
The DESCRIPTION tag is a great place to put your organization's slogan or another promotional or descriptive phrase that catches the reader's attention. Remember, most search engines will only use the first 150 characters or so. Focus first on the page's content and not your organization's slogan.
Be warned: most search engines have rules against META tag "spamming," which means you shouldn't try to overwhelm a search engine by repeating the same keyword or phrase over and over again. The best way to handle this is to keep your keywords and description short and concise, and avoid repetition.
Here's something to try: why not right-click this page, choose View Source, and see what META tags SitePoint chose to build into this article's HTML code? I didn't code this page, the SitePoint gurus did, and I bet you dollars to donuts that their META KEYWORDS and META DESCRIPTION tags are substantially different from the examples I cited above -- more suitable for SitePoint contt, and probably better choices than the ones I tossed off.
It's worth noting, as did several SitePoint Forums members, that of the four most popular search engines -- Google, AltaVista, FAST, and Inktomi -- only one, Inktomi, still indexes Web pages using the META KEYWORDS tag. Some people, including Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch, advise us not to bother writing META tags for the search engines (though conversely, it's probably not worth the effort to remove them from your existing pages).
On the other hand, it's worth noting that the Inktomi engine powers a number of smaller search engines, and other search engines such as Teoma may still be using META tags to help index their pages. Plenty of intranets and other subsidiary site searches also use META tags. And Inktomi itself is still a force to be reckoned with. So the decision is yours.
Is it worth the time and effort to create META KEYWORD and DESCRIPTION tags? The answer depends on the audience for your site and what search engines and strategies will be used to access the page. One thing's for certain, it doesn't hurt to include them. If you want to cover all your bases, go ahead and add them. Just be aware that they may not be worth the time and effort you spend crafting them.