What are meta tags?

The code for a basic meta tag:
<meta name="" content="">

Meta tags are placed in the head section of your HTML page and provide information to browsers and search engine spiders.

They can be used to control the actions of some robots and even prevent browsers from caching pages.

Meta tags can also be used to redirect a user to a different HTML document.

Their most common use is to provide page description and keyword information to search engine spiders for page ranking purposes.

New in HTML5

charset This meta tag should be included in the head section of each HTML5 document you create:
<meta charset="utf-8">

viewport Could be the most important meta when designing responsive web pages. Tells the browser to adjust to the width of a visiting device.
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

Want credit for your work?

Include this meta: <meta name ="author" content="your name here">

Some of the more interesting Metas

Redirection code:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5 ; url=index.html">

This code is useful when moving a website from one location to another. Proper spacing and position of quotation marks is critical. The code here would refresh the page after 5 seconds and open the index.html page.

You can use this code to test the procedure on your PC's browser. Place the code in the head section, save the page and open it in the browser. Be sure index.html is in the same directory. When using on the internet it is best to use a URL like: http://nuthersite.com/nutherpage.html

Cache Prevention code:
<meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache">

This code is useful when you update your pages a lot and you don't want someone loading a page that has been cached on their system. It is supposed to keep a browser from caching your page. Some browsers will ignore the code and cache anyway.

Robot Instructions:
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">

This code tells spiders to index the page and follow its links. It doesn't work with all robots. Other attributes are noindex and nofollow, which can be used in different combinations. The default is all which is the same as the code presented above.

Meta Tags Keywords and Search Engines

The 2 most widely used meta tags are the description and keywords tags:
<meta name="description" content="A brief description of this page.">

<meta name="keywords" content="brief , description , page">

This is a brief description of the pages content. The contents of the description tag are actually used by some search as the description of the page returned in search results, so try to make them informative and catchy. Keywords used in the description tag should also be found in the contents of the title tag, keywords tag and in the body of your HTML page.

Some search engines will also use the contents of the keywords tag to rank your pages. Keywords used in the keywords tag should also be found in the contents of the title tag, description tag and in the body of the document.

Search Engines

Search engines are in bad shape these days. The same sites appear over and over again the SERPS. I recently searched a keyword phrase and counted at least 20 listings by the same site in the first 3 pages and turned out it was a forum of questions and answers to the same question. I call those forums the blind leading the blind. So much for keywords and SEO. Google says it's not a GLITCH. Personally, I think Google is the GLITCH.

 

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