Using Meta Tags

Using the Insert bar: Head
The Head tab in the Insert bar contains objects for adding elements to the head section of your documents.

Meta inserts a meta tag into the head section of your document. A dialog box appears in which you can enter information for meta attributes.

A meta tag is a head element that records information about the current page, such as the character encoding, author, copyright, or keywords. These tags can also be used to give information to the server, such as the expiration date, refresh interval, and PICS rating for the page. (PICS, the Platform for Internet Content Selection, provides a method for assigning ratings, such as movie ratings, to web pages.)

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 you're supplying in this tag. Some values, such as description, keywords, and refresh, are already well defined (and have their own individual Property inspectors in Dreamweaver), but you can specify practically any value (for example, creationdate, documentID, or level).

Content is the actual information. For example, if you specified level for Value, you might specify beginner, intermediate, or advanced for Content.

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Keywords inserts a meta name="keywords" tag into the head section of your document. A dialog box appears in which you can enter keywords for the document.

Many search-engine robots (programs that automatically browse the web gathering information for search engines to index) read the contents of the Keywords meta tag and use the information to index your pages in their databases. Because some search engines limit the number of keywords or characters they index, or ignore all keywords if you go beyond the limit, it's a good idea to use just a few well-chosen keywords.

Enter your keywords, separated by commas, in the text box labeled Keywords.

Description inserts a Description meta tag into the head section of your document. A dialog box appears in which you can enter text that describes the document.

Many search-engine robots (programs that automatically browse the web gathering information for search engines to index) read the contents of the Description meta tag. Some use the information to index your pages in their databases, and some also display the information on the search results page (instead of displaying the first few lines of your document). Some search engines limit the number of characters they index, so it's a good idea to limit your description to a few words (for example, Pork barbecue catering in Albany, Georgia, or web design at reasonable rates for clients worldwide).

Enter descriptive text in the text box labeled Description.

Refresh inserts a Refresh meta tag into the head section of your document. A dialog box appears in which you can enter the number of seconds to wait before refreshing, and whether to reload the current page or go to a new one.

Use the Refresh element to specify that the browser should automatically refresh your page--by reloading the current page or going to a different one--after a certain amount of time. This element is often used to redirect users from one URL to another, often after displaying a text message that the URL has changed.

Delay is the time in seconds to wait before the browser refreshes the page. To make the browser refresh the page immediately after it finishes loading, enter 0 in this text box.

Action specifies whether the browser should go to a different URL or refresh the current page, after the specified delay. To make a different URL open (rather than refreshing the current page), click the Browse button, then browse to and select the page to load.

Base inserts a base tag into the head section of your document. A dialog box appears in which you can enter a base URL for the document's links.

Use the Base element to set the base URL that all document-relative paths in the page are considered relative to.

Href is the base URL. Click the Browse button to browse to and select a file, or type a path in the text box.

Target specifies the frame or window in which all linked documents should open. Choose one of the frames in the current frameset, or one of the following reserved names:

• _blank loads the linked document in a new, unnamed browser window.
• _parent loads the linked document into the parent frameset or window of the frame that contains the link. If the frame containing the link is not nested, then this is equivalent to _top; the linked document loads into the full browser window.
• _self loads the linked document in the same frame or window as the link. This target is the default, so you usually don't have to specify it.
• _top loads the linked document in the full browser window, thereby removing all fram

Link inserts a link tag into the head section of your document. A dialog box appears in which you can enter link information. Note that this is not a hypertext link; it is used most often to specify an external style sheet.

Use the Link element to define a relationship between the current document and another file. Note that the Link element in the head section is not the same thing as an HTML link between documents in the body section.

Href is the URL of the file that you are defining a relationship to. Click the Browse button to browse to and select a file, or type a path in the text box. Note that this attribute does not indicate a file that you're linking to in the usual HTML sense; the relationships specified in a Link element are more complex.

ID specifies a unique identifier for the link.

Title describes the relationship. This attribute has special relevance for linked style sheets; for more information, see the External Style Sheets section of the HTML 4.0 specification on the World Wide Web Consortium website.

Rel specifies the relationship between the current document and the document in the Href text box. Possible values include Alternate, Stylesheet, Start, Next, Prev, Contents, Index, Glossary, Copyright, Chapter, Section, Subsection, Appendix, Help, and Bookmark. To specify more than one relationship, separate values with a space.

Rev specifies a reverse relationship (the opposite of Rel) between the current document and the document in the Href text box. Possible values are the same as those for Rel.