The Head
You thought I was finished with all the long sections?
Sucker.
META
Once upon a time, <meta> tags were crucially important in the placement of sites on search engines. However, thanks to keyword-stuffing and other dubious practices their importance has been downplayed lately. It's still a good idea to set some, however, just so there's as much information about each page available as possible.
The meta element usually takes the following form:
<meta name="type of information" description="Information about the page." />
Once again, you'll notice that <meta> is an empty element. All the meaningful information is contained in the values of its attributes. It has no closing tag, and thus takes a forward slash just before the right angle bracket (fnar fnar).
Meta elements can contain all sorts of information. The type of information conveyed is taken from the value of the name attribute. The most commonly encountered meta tags are the following:
- Author
- Copyright
- Description
- Keywords
Author
This kind of meta tag is used to identify you as the author of a web page. It's quite simple.
<meta name="author" description="Phil Smith" />
Copyright
Understandably enough, more and more people are determined to assert their copyright over material they've written, and web pages are no exception. There's also a meta tag for this.
<meta name="copyright" description="© 2003-6 Phil Smith" />
Description
This is one of the most commonly encountered meta elements. It's good practice to include one of these, just so people know what your page is about. Make sure it's fairly concise and accurate, though. Simply giving it a value of Teh bestest webpaeg EVAR!!!1
isn't helpful. Or funny.
<meta name="description" description="Slack 'n' Hash's home page." />
Keywords
This is probably the most used (and abused) meta element. Simply put, you should make sure it contains a number of keywords that are relevant to the page. Don't repeat the same keyword endlessly, and don't pad it with a load of words that you think will attract the search engines, as keyword stuffing will almost certainly cause search engines to ignore your site. The following example's a bit on the long side, but you get the idea.
<meta name="keywords" description="home page, slack 'n' hash, index,
front page, d20 system, rpg, open game content, name generators, agartha,
shadegate, false world, dung eon, cube, degnom's travels, bluey" />