Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

meta names for search engines

Search engines introduced several meta names that aid their search engines in finding pages. Note that not all search engines use meta-data, but adding them to your document won’t hurt. There is a blurry distinction between name and http-equiv in this case, so most of these meta names also work as http-equiv definitions.

description

This provides a brief, plain-language description of the contents of your web page, which is particularly useful if your document contains little text, is a frameset, or has extensive scripts at the top of the HTML document. Search engines that recognize the description may display it in the search results page. Some search engines use only the first 20 words of descriptions, so get to the point quickly.

    <meta name="description" content="Jennifer Robbins' resume
        and web design samples" />

keywords

You can supplement the title and description of the document with a list of comma-separated keywords that would be useful in indexing your document. Note: Search engines have largely abandoned meta keywords in practice due to both spam and deterioration. There is a larger trend away from invisible metadata in general for these reasons, and toward more visible data in the contents themselves of web pages.

    <meta name="keywords" content="designer, web design, branding,
        logo design" />

author

Identifies the author of the web page.

    <meta name="author" content="Jennifer Robbins" />

copyright

Identifies the copyright information for the ...