ABC's about metatags

What is a Meta Tag?

A meta tag is a hidden tag that lives in the of an HTML document. It is used to supply additional information about the HTML document. The meta tag has three possible attributescontent,http-equiv, andname. Meta tags always provide information in a name/value pair. Thenameandhttp-equivattributes provide the name information and thecontentprovides the value information. Meta tags do not have a closing tag.

content
This attribute will always be found in a well formed meta tag. It provides the value information in the name/value pair. It can be any valid string, which you should enclose in quotes.

name
This is the name portion in the name value pair. You can use any name that you would like or that might be useful to you. Some common names are:

* keywords - words that identify what the page is about, usually used in search engines


* description - a short description of the page


* author - the author's name and possibly email address


* robots - to allow or disallow indexing by robots


* copyright - the copyright date of the page


http-equiv
This attribute is also a name for the name/value pair, but it is used by the server to include that name/value pair in the MIME document header passed to the Web browser before sending the actual HTML document. Some common http-equiv types are:

* charset - defines the character set used in the page


* expires - when the document will be out of date


* refresh - sets the number of seconds to reload the page or reload to a new page
Reload the page every 10 seconds:

Reload to a new page after 10 seconds:


How to Use a Meta Tag
Meta tags are included in the of an HTML document. If you are using meta tags to improve your standing in search engines, then you should focus on your description and keywords.

The description tag
Use the description tag to describe what your page is about. Engines that use it will supply the content of this tag when displaying a list of links. For example, if you do a search on About.com, you will see the description listed on the search results page.

The keywords tag
Keywords help search engines to categorize your site, and to allow people to find your pages more quickly. However, most search engines have limits as to how many meta keywords are viewed. It is a good idea to review your keywords and make sure that they are as concise and specific as possible.