Meta Tags

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="description" content="The description goes here">

When it comes to meta tags, the first thing that springs to mind is Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO for short. In other words, it's something that's often out of my league and have little time or inclination to immerse myself in. The applications I build however are often analysed by an SEO Specialist, so a little understanding would be beneficial.

There are two types of meta tag - http-equiv and name. The http-equiv attribute is used to add executable information to the HTTP response header, while the name attribute adds readable information to the HTTP header, often used by search engines.

As search engines evolve in how they gather their information to conduct searches, so do the importance of meta tags. At time of writing, the meta tags that are seen as important would be:

• Content-type - declares the character set used by the website. This is seen as important, as the content can sometimes be interpreted by the browser as being a different character type, but this tag avoids any conflicts. In English-speaking nations, the character set is usually ISO-8859-1.
• Description - often displayed by search engines on the results pages but not always as part of the search criteria, it can also be helpful when there is very little text on a page. Should be no more than 150-200 characters long.

One meta tag that is in debate is keywords. For a long time it was considered essential to have this tag, as it was used by search engines to determine how relevant a page was to a specific search. Search engines however have become increasing less dependent on this as their bots become more sophisticated and able to read entire pages. Some even go so far as to say that the keywords tag is actually abused in that websites are built using keywords from other sites to elevate their own.

Until a consensus is reached on this, I'm inclined to leave the tag out.