Defining Meta Tags | Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 for Windows & Macintosh

Information about the page is contained in a kind of HTML tag called a meta tag . Meta tags can include a variety of the page's summary information, including keywords to help search engines index the page, a text description of the page, and links to external documents, such as a style sheet.

When you insert meta information, it appears within the document's <head> tag, inside a <meta> tag:

 <meta name="keywords" content="HomeCook.  info, food, wine, cooking, home  cooking, homecook, dining>

You can set six categories of meta tags:

Meta is a general category that allows you to add any information you want. You must give it a name and specify the content.
Keywords adds one or more words to the document for use by search engines, to aid them in indexing the page.
Description adds a text description of the site, again for use by search engines.
Refresh reloads the current document after a specified interval of seconds, or redirects the document to another URL.
Base sets the base URL for the page. All of the document-relative paths in the page are considered relative to the base URL. For more information about document-relative links, see Chapter 7.
Link adds a link to an external document. It's used most often to define the location for an external CSS style sheet.

To add a meta tag:

Choose Insert > HTML > Head Tags, then choose the tag you want from the submenu ( Figure 3.35 ).

Figure 3.35. Dreamweaver allows you to set many meta tags for your document.

Depending on the kind of tag you chose, the appropriate dialog appears. For example, if you choose Keywords, the Keywords dialog appears ( Figure 3.36 ). In this dialog, you need to enter the page's keywords, separated by commas.

Figure 3.36. Separate Keywords with commas; Dreamweaver will turn these keywords into a meta tag for you.

Fill out the dialog, then click OK.

Tip

Don't go overboard with your Keywords or Description. Search engines have long since figured out that lots of keywords or a very long description are attempts to artificially improve search engine rankings, and sites with excessive keywords or descriptions will be screened out of search results.