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There's a plethora of different META Tags that you can make
use of on your site. Because there are so many, it's impossible
for me to cover all of them in this article. However, I will
describe the most common ones. But let's start from the beginning,
shall we?
What Are META Tags?
META tags are similar to standard HTML tags. However, there
is one big difference: You have to insert all META tags between
the <head> </head> tags on your page(s). META
tags are used primarily to include information about a document.
The META tags will be invisible to your site's visitors, but
will be seen by browsers and search engines.
For The Search Engines
Several of the major search engines make use of the META
Keyword tag, and virtually all of them make use of the Description
tag. These tags help the search engine spider determine the
content of your web site so that it can be indexed properly.
This is what they look like:
<META name="keywords" content="widgets,
widget guide">
<META name="description" content="The ultimate
guide to Widget
design!">
You can also instruct the search engine robot/spider how
to index your site using the robots META Tag. This is what
it looks like:
<META name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">
What the tag above does is tell the spider not to index the
page that it appears on, and not to follow the links on that
page. Here's a complete list of attributes for the robots
tag:
index - the default, the page is added to the
search engine database
noindex - the page is not added to the search
engine database
nofollow - the spider doesn't follow the links
on that page
none - same as "noindex, no follow"
To use any of these attributes simply replace the "noindex,nofollow"
text in the example above with whatever you want to use. If
you need to use more than one attribute, seperate them with
a comma.
Client Pull
Have you ever seen a page that automatically refreshes to
another URL after a few seconds? Did you ever wondered how
it was done? I'll tell you. The page made use of one of the
http-equiv META Tags to automatically "pull" you
to a different page after a few seconds. Here's what the code
looks like:
<META http-equiv="refresh" content="1;
url=newpage.htm">
The value of content denotes how many seconds will pass before
the new page is called for. If you want it to happen as soon
as a person hits that page, then set the value to "0".
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Prevent Caching
If you want to prevent a page being saved in your visitor's
cache you can do so by inserting the following three tags:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="0">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Cache-Control" CONTENT="no-cache">
Why would you want a page not to be cached? If your site
is updated frequently and you always want your visitors to
see the newest content/changes, or if you want to ensure that
a new banner is loaded each time from your server when a page
is accessed, you'll want to use the tags above.
A quick note here on banner caching: In addition to using
the tags above, you'll want to append random numbers at
the end of the tag calling the image. The ad serving software
that I use, Spinbox, does this for me.
Rating Your Content
By using the rating META tag on your site, you can specify
the appropriateness of your web site for kids. The tag looks
like this:
<META name="rating" content="general">
In addition to the general rating, you can use three others.
They are:
mature
restricted
14 years
Misc. Tags
Below I've listed several other popular tags that you may
have seen around the web.
The generator META tag is used to specify what program was
used to create your web site. Many HTML editing tools automatically
insert this so that a company can gauge their market penetration.
The tag looks like this:
<META name="generator" content="program
name and version">
The author tag is used to identify the author of a page.
Simply replace "author's name" with your name or
email address.
<META name="author" content="author's name">
The copyright tag identifies the individual or company that
holds the copyright to a particular page. This is what it
looks like:
<META name="copyright" content="This page
and all its contents are copyright 1997-1999 by Matt Mickiewicz.
All Rights Reserved."> Tip: If you want a quick way
to generate the META Keyword, Description, and no-cache tags
try MetaTag Generator http://www.webmasterbase.com/free/metagen.php3
by Matt Mickiewicz
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