The Meta Tags

Once you have completed your web site and you've tested it and tested it to see that all the links work and the graphics show up fine, etc., then it's time to place the META TAGS. The Meta Tags should be placed in the script on the first page of your site. You don't want to put them on every page because you want people to discover your site by the front door, your opening page.

Because there are over 9 billion webpages out there, people have to have some assistance in finding pages that interest them. They usually use "search engines" and "directories" to help them find what they need. When a search engine finds your page it puts the script of your page in its index. Because the page is just text, the search engine indexes hold vast amounts of info. AltaVista's index has approximately 120 million pages in its index. So how does a search engine find your page in its index?

It looks at your script in a certain order. First it looks at your <TITLE> tag in the heading. You should attempt to put critical words that describe your site in your title. The title can be quite long. You should play around with it.

Next the search engine looks for your META TAGS. You don't have to have meta tags but it sure makes it a lot easier for the searcher to find you. Let's look at some typical meta tags.

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <!--The first meta tag has to do with what language the script is written in. --> <meta name="description" content="Shuswap Vacation Rentals - offering quality seasonal accommodations in the Shuswap Lakes region of British Columbia."> <!-- The description meta tag is a phrase that shows up in the search engine's search results. It should be short and sweet. --> <meta name="keywords" content="Scotch Creek, Blind Bay, British Columbia, Lodging, Tourism, Accommodation, Adams River Salmon Run, Shuswap Lake, Sorrento, Cottages, Cabins, beach, outdoor recreation, Okanagan, lakeside cottages, lakeside cabins, Shuswap Lake, hummingbird"> <!-- The keywords meta tag is where you put every word you can come up with that has to do with your site. The limit is a thousand characters so you have some space to brainstorm. -->

Actually you can get quite complicated with meta tags but these I've provided will do the job. As an aside, you can actually use meta tags to do a slide show format. The tag looks like this:

<META name="refresh" content="6,yourpage.html">

In this tag the number 6 is the number of seconds before the page is changed and the "yourpage.html" is the page that the browser goes to after the timed interval. (Of course, you'd name the page something a bit more imaginitive than "yourpage" wouldn't you?)

Remember now, these tags go in the <HEAD> tags before or after the <TITLE> tags like in this example:

<HEAD> <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META name="description" content="Shuswap Lake Estates. One of Canada's Finest Lifestyle and Retirement Communities"> <META name="keywords" content="real estate, Shuswap, British Columbia, B.C., BC, Blind Bay, Canada, golf, lifestyle, retirement, interior, North Okanagan, Okanagan, Thompson Okanagan, High Country, tourism, adult community"> <TITLE>Shuswap Lake Estates - One of Canada's Finest Lifestyle and Retirement Communities </tITLE> </hEAD>

And that concludes my Basic Tutorial on HTML.

Using the information provided here will give you the skills to put together a basic web page. I have to warn you, though, the most important skill to have with web pages is not scripting but design. You can script like the dickens but have very poor looking pages.

Get reference books on design. A good one I would recommend is The Non-Designer's Web Book by Williams & Tollet. The publisher is PeachPit Press. You can order it from any bookstore. TTFN

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