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Resources: Building Web Pages That Search Engines Will Index
Getting listed higher in the search engines is something we all would like to know how to do. Well, one thing to keep in mind is that search engines use programs that select pages from the Web and sort them according to their context. Some of these programs that compile Web pages simply extract filenames or titles from headers. Others use a more complete and complex method that depends on the HTML author to attach indexing information in the HTML file in special meta tags, as they're called.
META tags are invisible HTML elements that record information about the current page, such as the author, copyright, and keywords. Meta tags are used to create customized, local searchable indexes of your Web pages. Keywords, titles, and descriptions are some of the most important meta tag information on your Web site. They're also completely unnoticed except to HTML experts who want to view your source code. They are used by search engines to catalog your Web site and what terms can be found on the site.
You need to make sure that each separate page contains only descriptive text describing that actual page.
To view elements in the HEAD section of a document:
- Choose View > Head Content. For each element of the HEAD content, an icon appears at the top of the Document window.
To insert elements into the HEAD section of a document: Do one of the following:
- Choose an item from the Insert > Head submenu.
- Enter options for the element in the dialog box that appears or in the Property inspector.
To edit existing elements in the HEAD section of a document:
- Click one of the icons in the HEAD section to select it.
- Set or modify the properties of the element in the Property inspector.
Attribute Specifies whether the META tag contains descriptive information about the page (NAME) or HTTP header information (HTTP-EQUIV). Value Specifies the type of information being offered. Some values, such as description, keywords, and refresh, are already well defined (and have their own special Property inspectors in Dreamweaver), but you can specify practically any value (for example, creationdate, documentID, level). Content Is the actual information. For example, if you specified level as the Value, Content might be beginner, intermediate, or advanced.
If you view the header of this page, WINDOW > HTML Source, the Keyword and Description Meta tags have been used to allow search engines to catalog this page. The viewer sees nothing different, but the top of the page actually contains the following HTML tags:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Using Keyword and Description Meta Tags</TITLE>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="meta tags, keywords, description, search engines">
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="An explanation of the use of META tags to make it easier for search engines to locate your web site">
<HEAD>