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META tags are used by most search engines when searching for a page. They include information about the page such as the author's name, the site's language, the program used to create the page, a description of the site, and keywords that identify the content of the site.
So basically META commands are used to make your page more searchable. META elements are placed in the HEAD part of the document because this information is not part of the page that is viewed.
Each META tag contains two attributes. The two parts are NAME which states the
property and CONTENT which describes the property. And here is the form
they take:
<HEAD>
<META NAME="..." CONTENT="...">
</HEAD>
Now several of these properties will be described in detail: Author, Language,
Generator, Keywords, and Description. These properties are what will go
in the NAME part of the command (ie, NAME="Author"), and the CONTENT is the description of the property (ie, CONTENT="Author's Name").
You don't need to include all these properties on your site (you may only want to include a description and keywords for example).
Author
The first of these, Author, stated simply, says who is the author of the page.
And here is what it will look like:
<HEAD>
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Put your name here">
</HEAD>
Language
The next property listed is Language. All Language states is what
language your page is written in. So for english we will write
CONTENT="en". Adding Language to our example will produce:
<HEAD>
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Put your name here">
<META NAME="Language" CONTENT="en">
</HEAD>
Generator
Generator is used to show what editor was used to produce the page.
Chances are that if you are using an HTML editor such as Microsoft
FrontPage then the editor already will write this in for you. But
supposing that it doesn't, here is how we will write it:
<HEAD>
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Put your name here">
<META NAME="Language" CONTENT="en">
<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Microsoft FrontPage">
</HEAD>
Keywords
Keywords are used to identify your page. It is used by search engines
when searching for pages on a certain subject. For example, keywords for this site would include HTML, HTML Help, Creating Websites, JavaScript, etc. Basically you will want to include anything you think a user would type in when using a search engine to find your page.
To include the keyword information in META, type the keywords in the CONTENT part, separated by commas with no spaces in between. It is very important not to put spaces after the commas because search engines will read this as a character part of the keyword. For example, if for this site I used for my keywords "HTML, HTML Help" instead of "HTML,HTML Help" and a user was searching for "HTML Help", the search engine would not say " HTML Help" is the same as "HTML Help". Here is
what it will look like added to our example:
<HEAD>
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Put your name here">
<META NAME="Language" CONTENT="en">
<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Microsoft FrontPage">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="HTML,JavaScript,HTML
Examples,JavaScript Examples">
</HEAD>
A keyword can be repeated several times to show its importance. This
may help your page to be listed more at the top of a list when being
searched. For example, if I want this site to be one of the first shown on a search results page for HTML Help, I would write the Keywords CONTENT like this "HTML Help,HTML Help,HTML Help, etc". Here is what it will look like:
<META NAME="Keywords"
CONTENT="HTML,HTML,HTML,
JavaScript,JavaScript,JavaScript,HTML
Examples,JavaScript Examples">
Description
The last property that we will cover is Description. When a search
engine produces a list of pages that answer the query, the name of the
page is listed with a short description of the page, which in some cases
is the first few words of the page if no description exists. The first few words listed may not
represent what the page as a whole is about which may cause users to skip over your site. The Description element is
used to state a brief description about the page to get visitors' attention to visit your site. Here is the Description added to our
example:
<HEAD>
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Put your name here">
<META NAME="Language" CONTENT="en">
<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="Microsoft FrontPage">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="HTML,JavaScript,HTML
Examples,JavaScript Examples">
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="This page includes HTML,
JavaScript, and examples of both."
</HEAD>
Now users will be able to find and enjoy your site!
Last Updated March 21, 2001
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