Using Meta Tags in Web Page Design

A Web Hosting Article Contributed by Frances Rhea

What is a Web Page Design Meta Tag?

When designing a web page it is necessary to attach extra information about the particular web page. Visitors do not see most of this information directly. It does impact what happens with the web page design. They are always in the section of the web page.

The Meta Tags in Web Page Design

Some META tags are like HTTP headers. This tag controls what the browser does. It controls if the browser should load the web page from the cache or download a new version. When you design your web page, there are several ways to do this with a tag. They are:

Using a refresh tag tells the browser when it should automatically load the web page listed in the URL attribute. This is useful when you want a simple redirect. The tag looks like this:

The number before the URL is the delay in seconds that the visitor will be transferred.

Sometimes a visitor will find your site through a web site that has framed pages. Their frame will outline your web page design. The target tag will force the browser to remove the frames. It works like the 'target' attribute of a link tag. This is a target tag:

Different languages display pages differently. Using a language tag tells the browser which style to use. Here is a language tag:

The content tag tells the browser whether the web page is made with HTML or uses a specific application to display the content. These are a couple examples:

The second tag will launch Microsoft Excel if your visitor has Excel installed on their system.

A NAME tag includes such things as author, copyright, description and keywords. They provide information for search engines to use. Here are some examples of these tags:

Robots Tags in Web Page Design

There are several tags specific to search engine robots. These can be helpful if you have a specific page you don't want the search engines to find. They are:

The first tag tells the robot not to index the page but follow the links; the second indicates to index but not follow links; the third tells the robot to ignore the page completely; and the last tag tells the robot to index and follow all links.