Meta tags
Sisters and Brethren 
I want to get to grips with Meta tags, particularly description and keywords. Can you enlighten me please.
Many thanks
Mike Abbott
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| Code: |
| <meta name="description" content="Description of this page"> |
This should be a brief description of the page's content. Some search engines will display this text as the search result.
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| <meta name="keywords" content="beer sex girls"> |
This is used by some search engines, while others ignore it, since it became common to cram it with irrelevant keywords for spamming purposes. The keywords can be separated by spaces or commas. I'm not sure if case matters.
I think you should include "description", and it won't hurt to include "keywords" either, but don't rely on them for SEO. Enigma will be able to tell you a lot more about this, I'm sure.
Tommy has left the building
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The case does matter to some meta engines.};-) http://www.xhtmlcoder.com/
WVYFC chose the Yorkshire Air Ambulance as the main charity to fund raise for in 2006
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| TOOLman wrote: | ||
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more likely to be
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| Diet coke, children, the wife |
Thanks for the help.
Robert, interesting comment. Do you mean the words have to have leading capitals to experience the best results
Cheers
Mike Abbott
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| TOOLman wrote: | ||
This is used by some search engines, while others ignore it, since it became common to cram it with irrelevant keywords for spamming purposes. |
if i remember correctly, only Inktomi still looks at keywords (although you may have an internal search engine on a site that uses them, provided it's reliable, valuable information).
Patrick H. Lauke / webmaster / University of Salford
co-lead: WaSP Accesibility Task Force
take it to the streets ... WaSP Street Team
personal: splintered | photographia | redux
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| Mikea wrote: | ||
tush, tush you little devil more likely to be
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Yeah? Let's set up two pages and compare the server logs to see who gets the most requests ...
Tommy has left the building
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| TOOLman wrote: | ||||
Yeah? Let's set up two pages and compare the server logs to see who gets the most requests ... |
Good grief, a challange to a pleb from a guru. I'm flattened, sorry, flattered 
Mike Abbott
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Guru? What guru? Where? Tommy has left the building
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Mike,
Your original question about meta tags seems to be about search engine optimization. Gez has a good article about search engine optimization on his web site at http://www.juicystudio.com/accessible-seo. I'm sorry if I stole your thunder, Gez. It was pointed out to me in a newsletter and I had to point it out here.
Another thing to keep in mind about getting people to your web site is to market the web site. Although I am not one to speak, there are many ways to get your target audience to your web site.
Stephanie
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Thanks Steph. 
Mike Abbott
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Glad to help to point out resources.
I also forgot to mention that from the little reading that I have been doing on the subject, metadata is data about data. It sounds like computer science. My conclusion is, especially from reading www.juicystudio.com, that meta tags are not necessary for search engine optimization. A good document is.
Stephanie
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Yes content is king but they are still important for the meta engines and a relationship between keywords and text appearing in the document does make practical sense. But most people are slaves to Google.};-) http://www.xhtmlcoder.com/
WVYFC chose the Yorkshire Air Ambulance as the main charity to fund raise for in 2006
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I'm sorry if I stole your thunder, Gez. |
Thanks for mentioning Juicy Studio, Steph
You haven't stolen my thunder, as I wouldn't have mentioned it as it doesn't mention meta data which is what Mike was asking about.
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But most people are slaves to Google. |
It's nothing to do with being a slave to Google, it's more about how effective the current mechanism is for specifying meta data. There's obviously a requirement for specifying meta data about documents so that search engines can categorise and index content correctly. I specify the meta data for Juicy Studio as dublin core in an external RDF document. As far as I'm aware, no search engines make use of this, but that's how I think meta data will be specified in the future, and RDF is important for a semantic web.
Content is king, but accessible content is the answer to the King's prayers as it's machine friendly, so more likely to perform well with search engines.
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| gez wrote: |
| I specify the meta data for Juicy Studio as dublin core in an external RDF document. As far as I'm aware, no search engines make use of this, but that's how I think meta data will be specified in the future, and RDF is important for a semantic web. |
Thank youMike Abbott
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| Mikea wrote: |
| Can you be more precise as to what a dublin core is and what RDF documents are please Thank you |
Hi Mike,
I wrote about it in an article earlier this year: http://www.juicystudio.com/semantic-rdf/
The RDF specification can be found at: http://www.w3.org/RDF/
And Qualified Dublin Core in RDF/XML: http://dublincore.org/documents/dcq-rdf-xml/
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