Newbie Q: Which Meta-Tags ought I to use?

[John Latter]

Hi,

I'm just starting to use HTML-Kit and when I create a new html file it
only enters the 'Title' meta-tag.

I've done a (brief) google search on meta-tags and have ended up
somewhat confused - is there an optimum 'subset' of meta-tags that I
can use?

If so, what are they please?

--

John Latter

The 'Socially Acceptable Violence' website:
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/sac.html

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/TEM.html

 

[Adrienne]

Hi,

I'm just starting to use HTML-Kit and when I create a new html file it
only enters the 'Title' meta-tag.

I've done a (brief) google search on meta-tags and have ended up
somewhat confused - is there an optimum 'subset' of meta-tags that I
can use?

If so, what are they please?

<title> element - very important, should describe the page with relevant
keywords
<meta name="description" content="description of that page using relevant
keywords"> - used by some search engines to provide a brief description of
the site

<meta name="keywords" content="relevant keywords separated by commas"> -
been used for spamming search engines, so hardly any search engines pay
any attention to it.

<h1> through <h6> use to markup section headings in the document. <h1>
typically used for the the title of the page (not to be confused with the
title element above. Do not use heading elements for big bold text, use
them for what they are.

 

[John Latter]

<title> element - very important, should describe the page with relevant
keywords
<meta name="description" content="description of that page using relevant
keywords"> - used by some search engines to provide a brief description of
the site

<meta name="keywords" content="relevant keywords separated by commas"> -
been used for spamming search engines, so hardly any search engines pay
any attention to it.

<h1> through <h6> use to markup section headings in the document. <h1>
typically used for the the title of the page (not to be confused with the
title element above. Do not use heading elements for big bold text, use
them for what they are.

Thanks Adrienne! There are quite a lot of meta-tags but if its good
practice to use just a few then that's what I'll do. I was wondering
about the 'Robots' one though - wouldn't it be a good idea to include
that?

--

John Latter

The 'Socially Acceptable Violence' website:
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/sac.html

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/TEM.html

 

[Adrienne]

Thanks Adrienne! There are quite a lot of meta-tags but if its good
practice to use just a few then that's what I'll do. I was wondering
about the 'Robots' one though - wouldn't it be a good idea to include
that?

The best thing to use when dealing with robots is the robots.txt file, just
a plain text file. You only really need it is you do NOT want a robot in a
certain part of your site, for example if you wanted to exclude an images
directory:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /images

The default action for a robot is to index and follow. So, putting <meta
name="robots" content="index, follow"> is redundant. You only want to use
it if you do NOT want the robot to index or follow. Additionally, most
well behaved robots will obey the Robots Exclusion Standard (robots.txt),
but many do not even bother with the Meta element.

 

[John Latter]

The best thing to use when dealing with robots is the robots.txt file, just
a plain text file. You only really need it is you do NOT want a robot in a
certain part of your site, for example if you wanted to exclude an images
directory:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /images

The default action for a robot is to index and follow. So, putting <meta
name="robots" content="index, follow"> is redundant. You only want to use
it if you do NOT want the robot to index or follow. Additionally, most
well behaved robots will obey the Robots Exclusion Standard (robots.txt),
but many do not even bother with the Meta element.

Okey-doke! Thanks again Adrienne

--

John Latter

The 'Socially Acceptable Violence' website:
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/sac.html

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/TEM.html