What are Meta Tags?
Meta elements are special HTML codes that contains the metadata, which is the”data describing data itself”. Unlike regular codes, meta elements do not affect the appearance of the website. Its purpose is to specify and provide certain information of the page such as author and copyright, identify and assign proper values.
Once the meta tags play a major role in the algorithm of the search engines. Although they are no longer the primary factor, they are still important to a website and good to have regardless, since they can give your page a unique description to the search engines. Meta tags are relevant for a successful website SEO process.
There are four valid attributes of meta elements. They are : content, name, http-equiv and scheme.”Content” provides the property of the meta information, while”Name” provides property name for the corresponding value. The”scheme” formats and interprets the property value.” Http-equiv” is used to indicate the property as a HTTP header for HTTP servers to gather informantion and respond.
The <meta> tags should always stay inside the <head> element.
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<head> <title>Mavista - Web Site Management Solutions</title> <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″> </head> |
Here are some common usage of the meta tags:
Name attribute:
Author – States the author of the page.
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<meta name=”author” content=”Alan”> |
Copyright – Declare the copyright of the page.
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<meta name=”copyright” content=”Mavista.com”> |
Description – Give a brief description of the page’s contents.
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<meta name=”description” content=”Mavista Platform is a rental ecommerce solution services.”> |
Generator – The generator you used to edit the page.
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<meta name=”generator” content=”Dreamweaver”> |
Keywords – Provide page keywords for the search engines.
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<meta name=”keywords” content=”Web Site Design, CMS, SME, Website Solutions”> |
Meta Robots – Instructions givem to search engine robots.
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<meta name=”robots” content=”all/none, index/noindex ,follow/nofollow, noarchive” > |
index – The page should be indexed.
noindex - The page should not be indexed.
follow - The links of the page should be followed.
nofollow – The links of the page should not be followed.
all – Equivalent to index, follow.
none - Equivalent to noindex, nofollow.
noarchive – The page should not be archived.
Http-equiv attribute:
Content-type – The character set of the page. Your browser show the page in the code according to the setting.
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<meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″ > |
Content-language – Declares the natural language of the page.
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<meta http-equiv=”content-language” content=”zh-cn”> |
Expires – The page’s cache will expire after a certain period of time and need to be revisited to update.
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<meta http-equiv=”expires” content=”Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT” > |
Pragma - Forbids browsing files of the page from the cache area. The files are no longer accessible after the page is close.
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<meta http-equiv=”pragma” content=”no-cache”> |
Refresh – Refresh the page every certain period of time.
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<Meta http-equiv=”refresh” Content=”30″> |
Set-cookie – Set cookies in the user’s web browser until it expires.
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<meta http-equiv=”set-cookie” CONTENT=”cookievalue=xxx;expires=Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT; path=/”> |
Widow-target – Prevent external sites stealing your pages as their frame pages.
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<meta http-equiv=”Widow-target” Content=”_blank/_top/_self/_parent “> |
Scheme attribute:
Meta scheme is used to intercept the value of the specified property of the content attribute.
| <meta scheme =”ISBN” name=”identifier” content=”9571039292″ > |