The HTML Head Section - Home Of The Meta Tags

There are several HTML meta tags in the head section of an HTML webpage. Some of the meta tags are a way that search engines find and list your webpage. For example, one meta tag is a list of search words (keywords) and another meta tag is a short description of your webpage. Now suppose someone using a search engine such as Google or Yahoo types in the search words "Christmas decorations". If the meta tag on your webpage includes those search words, then your webpage has a better chance of being included on the search results page. As you can see, a good choice of keywords and a good description is very important. You will attract visitors to your webpage/website who are interested in what you have to say or sell.

REVIEW:
In the Say Hello World With HTML lesson you created your first HTML webpage, Template1.html. We discussed what HTML was (a computer language made up of tags) and you were introduced to these eight HTML tags. We will be adding meta tags to this webpage.

Template1.html - source code

<html>
<head>
<title>Hello World</title>
</head>
<body>
Hello World
</body>
</html>

As I mentioned above, there are two meta tags in the head section that we will now talk about. The first meta tag is the keywords meta tag. The following is the basic code for the keywords meta tag.

<meta name="keywords" content="value">

<	left angle bracket
meta	element name
name	The name attribute controls the name or identification of this meta tag.
keywords	This is the value half of the name attribute/value pair. The "name" for this meta tag is keywords.
content	The content attribute controls what is read by the search engine. It tells the search engine to read the words between the quotation marks on the right side of the equal sign.
value	This is the value half of the content attribute/value pair. Your search words that are between the quotation marks are read by the search engine.
>	right angle bracket

As you can see from the table above the name attribute identifies this meta tag as a keywords meta tag. The value for the content attribute (your search words) is what the search engines will read to evaluate your webpage.

So what you have to do now is to make a list of keywords for your webpage. These words should reflect what your webpage is about. Put yourself in the place of someone searching for a webpage like yours. What words would you type into the search engine? For example, if your webpage is about quilting you might use the following keywords.

quilts, quilting, quilt fabrics, quilt patterns, quilt batting, quilting books, applique, picture quilts, quilt blocks, quilt block to the month

Now that you've made your list of keywords, you can add them to the keywords meta tag. Do not use any hard returns, just let the words wrap around to the next line. Also, sometimes you can get better results if you do not use any spaces between each keyword. Separate the keywords only with a comma. It would look like this.

Note--The arrow

indicates that the code is wrapped to a second line and should really be all on one line.

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	Elizabeth Connick BellaOnline's HTML Editor