Chapter 81. Adding Keywords and Page Descriptions
When search engines such as Google and Alta Vista catalog your site, they examine the content of your pages and catalog the particular words and phrases that seem to crop up regularly. When a visitor to google.com or altavista.com searches under, say, shoelaces, there's a good chance that your site appears among the results if you use the word shoelaces on your pages.
GEEKSPEAKKeywords are subject headings for your page. A page description is a short, one-paragraph summary of the page's content. |
<title>Shoelaces Etc. Home</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="shoelaces, sneakers, running shoes, tennis shoes, dress
shoes, laced shoes, laces, knots, shopping">
<meta name="description" content="The home page of the world's first full-service,
24-hour shopping shoelace experience, featuring warehouse selection and pricing for all
the top names in high-quality shoelaces, including designer labels and value brands."
</head>
In both cases, the meta tag is the same. There isn't a separate keywords tag, in other words, and a separate description tag. Both use the same general meta tag. What distinguishes these types of tags is the name attribute. To create a meta tag for keywords, set the value of the name attribute to keywords. To create a meta tag for the page description, set the value to description. The value of the content attribute becomes either the list of keywords or the description of the page.
GEEKSPEAKMeta tags are special HTML tags that contain general information about a page. |
TIPWhen you come up with a list of keywords, try to think of the words and phrases that your visitors will type into their search engines. |
GEEKSPEAKA robot is a special piece of software that catalogs or sniffs (or spiders) your site for a search engine. |