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Using Meta Tags

How to add Meta tags in Freeway

Defining a new Meta tag

Defining keywords which describe your site

Defining the Description of a page

Loading another page automatically

Finding out more about META tags

Using Meta Tags

Unseen by the visitor to your site, Meta tags play an important part in enhancing your site's effectiveness. Their most important use relates to making it easy for potential visitors to your site to find out about it and what it can do for them. Without the correct Meta tags to help search engines to bring visitors, no matter how well designed your site, or how compelling the content, the chances of achieving much impact are greatly reduced.

Meta tags added to an HTML document do not show up when the page is viewed, but they can be seen by viewing the source of the page using the appropriate command in a Web browser. If you are new to Web publishing, it's a good idea to visit some sites which resemble the one you are going to design, and view their source to see how the designers have used Meta Tags. You'll find that successful sites and those created by professional designers will usually have well-specified Meta tags, whereas those created by novices or casual Web publishers won't.

There are many potential uses for Meta tags, but here are some of the commonest:

  • Describing the content of a page
  • Listing keywords which relate to the page
  • Storing the name of the creator of the site
  • Storing the name of the software used in the site creation
  • Changing to a new page automatically

The most important uses are the first two - it is the content and keywords which have the most effect on the ability of Internet search engines to correctly store and retrieve your site in response to user queries.

Be sure to define the Description and Keywords Meta tags correctly for the home or index page for your site, so that you will get the most benefit from search engines and people will find it easy to locate your site if they don't have the actual URL.

Opinions differ on whether it is a good thing to add Description and Keywords tags to every page in your site or not. On balance, it is probably best to define these tags only for the home or index page - the reason for this is that once your site becomes live, and has been indexed by several search engines, references to your site abound in the outside world, and are largely outside your power to change. This becomes a problem if you subsequently move or rename the pages which are referenced by outside agencies, as the links to your site will be broken and people will find it far less easy to get to your pages. The one page which will always be there in the future, and whose name is unlikely to change, is the index page.

Another reason is that you generally want visitors to come through the front page so that they will see any new information you have added since the last time they visited.

How to add Meta tags in Freeway

Meta tags are added to pages in Freeway using the Meta Tags command on the Page menu. The tags are added to the HTML output for the current page when you use the Meta Tags command. If you want particular tags to appear on more than one page, consider adding the Meta tags to a common master page.

Here is an example of a Meta tag:

<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Freeway 1.0.1">

This tag is added to every page that Freeway creates by default.

When you choose the Meta Tags command in Freeway, it displays the Meta Tags dialog box, which is divided into two parts; System Variables and User Variables.

You can add new tags to either of these using the Add, Delete and Edit buttons given beside the listing for each section.

Defining a new Meta tag

To define a new Meta tag for a page:

  1. Choose Meta Tags from the Page menu
  2. click Add to define a new tag in either System Variables or User Variables. (Normally you'll be adding tags to the User Variables section.) This displays the Edit Name/Value dialog which allows you to define a new Name/Value pair.
  3. Type the text you wish to appear for NAME in the Name text field
  4. Type the text you wish to appear for CONTENT in the Value text field
  5. Click OK to return to the Meta tags dialog
  6. Either click Add to define another tag or click OK to accept the changes
  7. When you preview or publish the site, the tags you defined will be added to the HTML output for the page

Defining keywords which describe your site

Search engines function in a variety of different ways, but while many will index the actual textual content of your site, and list any pages which physically contain the search words entered by someone making a query, priority is often given if the words used to search on are defined as KEYWORDS for a page, as opposed to just appearing in the body of a page. This means that someone searching on a particular word will be offered pages which have that word defined as a keyword before pages which merely contain that word.

Effective use of the Keyword tag could potentially mean the difference between someone finding your site, as opposed to a competitor's.

To define keywords for your page:

  1. Change to the page on which you wish to include the keywords
  2. Choose Meta tags from the Page menu
  3. Click Add to define a new User Variable tag
  4. For Name, type the word KEYWORDS
  5. For value, type relevant keywords, separated by commas and spaces

  6. Click OK to return to the Meta Tags dialog
  7. Next time you preview or publish the page, your tags will be added to the output, for example:

    <META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="Freeway, Web, Design, Software">

Defining the Description of a page

When the search engines bring up a list of found sites which relate to the search criteria entered by a user, they often have the option to display a description of what the site contains. If you have defined a DESCRIPTION Meta tag, the contents of this are used to describe your site in the found list. If you haven't, then the listing may either display no information beyond the URL and page title, or it may display the first sentence or two of text from the page.

To define the description of your page:

  1. Change to the page on which you wish to include the description
  2. Choose Meta tags from the Page menu
  3. Click Add to define a new User Variable tag
  4. For Name, type the word DESCRIPTION
  5. For value, type a sentence or two describing your site

  6. Click OK to return to the Meta Tags dialog
  7. Next time you preview or publish the page, your tags will be added to the output, for example:

    <META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="SoftPress Systems, home of Freeway - the Web publishing tool for designers">

Loading another page automatically

Using a particular Meta tag, REFRESH, it is possible to cause the Web browser software to reload the page after a certain delay, and adding a different URL to the tag allows the loading of a different page automatically.

This is used for practical purposes when a popular page or site has moved to a different location - frequently, a special page is left in the old location to inform people of the change and asking them to update their bookmarks, and this page can be used to transfer the visitor automatically after a preset delay.

This technique is often used as a special effect where on entering a new site, a cover page is displayed for a few moments before automatically entering the main home page of the site. Although over-used for a while, this can still be a very effective way of branding a site, or heightening the "dramatic tension" before revealing something sought-after.

To load another page automatically, define a Meta tag as follows:

  1. 1. Change to the page in the site you wish to add the tag to
  2. 2. Choose Meta tags from the Page menu
  3. 3. Click Add to define a new System Variable tag - these use the syntax HTTP-EQUIV rather than NAME
  4. 4. For Name, type the word REFRESH
  5. 5. For value, type the following text, substituting the number 5 with a different delay in seconds if desired, and replacing the text "nextpage.html" with the URL you wish the visitor to be transerred to:
  6. 5;URL=nextpage.html
  7. 6. Click OK to return to the Meta Tags dialog, and OK again
  8. 7. Next time you preview or publish the page, your tags will be added to the output, for example:
  9. <META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="5;URL=nextpage.html">

Finding out more about META tags

There is a great deal more to learn about Meta tags, their origins, and their use - one of the best resources is the following: http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/

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