Intermediate HTML
Intermediate HTML
Go to Searching you out • Contacting you
Putting a title at the top of your page after the <body> tag displays the title for your readers, but not for their browsers. In order for a title to display at the top of the browser window, or in the browser's history list, you must place a title within <head></head> tags, which come before the <body> tag, like this:
<html><head><title>My
Page</title></head>
<body>
Because whatever you type between the <title></title> tags is what will display in history lists, you need to be more descriptive than the above example. But keep in mind that these lists only display about 30 characters. So exercise your headline-writing skills! Descriptive, yet concise.
Search engines find pages on the web by looking at titles and the first few lines of the page, among other things. This is a good reason to word your title carefully and to put introductory descriptions of your page in a prominent position.
You can augment these clues to your pages' content, howver, by including meta tags in the <head></head> portion of your text.
These tags follow this format:
<meta name="xxx" content="yyy">
In the expression above, the name attribute essentially provides a "category" for the information and the content attribute consists of descriptive or explanatory words that fit the category and apply to the page. You can have as many meta tags as you like in the <head></head> portion of your page, but each one requires a separate line:
<meta name="xxx" content="yyy">
<meta name="aaa" content="bbb">
There is no single official standard which limits meta names or content, although some standard sets are being developed and used in some types of documents. The Web Developer's Virtual Library has a good list of resources if you are interested in pursuing this further). You can also look at the source code for some pages with meta tags to get a feel for how they are normally used.
Two types of meta tags that are useful to search engines and that seem to be somewhat standardized are "description," which is a prose description of your page, and "keywords," which is a listing of words to describe your content. The content values must be less than 1024 characters, and you can't use any mark-up features (italics, bolding, etc.) in these expressions.
Some search engines are also becoming sophisticated enough that they can search for headings on pages. So word your headings, as well as your title, with care. Also, be sure to use heading tags, rather than simply increasing font size to make your headings, since the search engines will be looking for those tags.
If, for some reason (e.g., they are seriously under construction ) you don't want search engines to find your pages, you can prevent them. Read about this on the Web Robots Pages.
For more information on optimal web design, from the search engines' point of view, as well as other ideas on promoting your site, check SearchEngines.com.
It is considered good Web etiquette to have a contact point somewhere on your page so that people can let you know how fabulous the page looks, how valuable it was to them, and, occasionally, to point out errors you may have made. The most convenient way to do this is with a mailto link. The tags for this kind of link are of the paired and nested variety, and are similar to link tags.
Typing:
<a href=mailto:"kamen@stmarytx.edu">Email me!</a>
Would display:
and when users click on this link, a mail window will pop up for them to use. Be aware, however, that in some situations, users cannot send mail from the computers they are using. (For example, computers for public use may have their mail function disabled.) For these users, it is not only courteous, but necessary, to let them know your email address. To accomplish this, I usually make my email address the mailto link's anchor text:
Email me at: <a href=mailto:"kamen@stmarytx.edu">kamen@stmarytx.edu</A>
displays as:
Email me at: kamen@stmarytx.edu.
This does mean that you have to type your address twice (or cut and paste) but if you are serious about wanting to hear from all your readers, you need to do it.
IMPORTANT NOTE: All of the instructions in this and my other tutorials apply to authoring for the Web at present (mid-2007) and will continue to be useful into the future. But to be sure you are using the latest standards, especially as we get further from 2007, you can always check with the good folks at W3Schools.