This article describes meta-tags: why and how to add them to your blog.
It applies to any type of meta-tag except the description-tag: Blogger introduced special editing tools for them in late March 2012, so they are covered separately.
What is a meta-tag, and why would you use one
A meta-tag is a piece of HTML code that is found inside a webpage, and contains information about the page.
When HTML was invented, meta-tags were used for data about who made each page, what it's about, and what keywords apply to it. Originally search-engines used these tags to build indexes (ie databases) about where to find things. However this doesn't often happen now: spammers used meta-tags to lie to the search-engines, so the search-engines got smarter and ignored meta-tags.
Today, however, meta-tags are still used to give "information" about websites to electronic visitors, for many purposes.
For example, a search-engine or directory may ask you to prove that you do own a website which you claim to own, by adding a meta-tags of their choice to it. PInterest lets website-owners opt out of having their sites shared / pinned by adding a specific meta-tag that effectively says "Nope, you're not allowed to pin this one". And Facebook uses (still? maybe it's used now) open-graph meta tags to let us set the picture and text that are shown when a page is shared.
There are a wide variety of meta-tags still in use on the web today. And they are a clever idea: no one needs to set the "rules" about what meta-tags are allowed - they just need to be available to whatever electronic-visitors see them on a website.
What does a meta-tag look like:
These are some example meta-tags:
<meta name="description" content="Adding pictures to your blog without using gadgets" />
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML,images, filestore, picture" />
<meta name="author" content="Mary Smith" />
Each one has two parts (in technical terms, this arrangement is called a "name/value pair"):
some text that says what the meta-tag is about (eg description, author)
some text that contains the value for this case (eg "Mary Smith")
This idea has been used in other ways too - instead of "name" some meta-tags use other values, like
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
If you look at your blog's template, you may find that there are already meta-tags there, which Blogger added to every post and page. For example in Blogger-HAT's template I can see:
<meta content='some-verification-codes-from-Google' name='google-site-verification'/>
<meta content='IE=EmulateIE7' http-equiv='X-UA-Compatible'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.isMobile'>
<meta content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=0' name='viewport'/>
<b:else/>
The first is a verification tag from webmaster central that I added a long time ago, while the others are meta-tags that Blogger developers decided would be good to have.
What does each meta-tag apply to
Before adding a meta-tag you need to decide whether it applies to every screen (ref: Blogger, blogs and bloggers, Posts, Pages and screens) that your blog shows, or whether it only applies to an individual post.
As a general rule, think about what the content of the meta-tag means: unless you can see how it specifically relates to material in a post, then you are probably best adding it to your whole blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment