The Importance of Meta Tags
Meta tags are an important part of the web programming process. In this first part of the series, we are going to take a look at some of the different tags you should be using in your code.
First, it's important to understand what meta tags are. They are elements that are used to provide metadata about a web page. These tags are placed in the [head] part of the code. These elements are used to specify keywords, page description, authorship, robot/crawler instructions, etc. These tags are important to help search engines crawl your site and therefore help in search engine ranking.
Meta Description Tag
This is a very important tag and shouldn't be left out of your code. It is used to provide the search engines with a short and concise description of that particular page. Yes, that means that each page of the site should have a different description. That will help immensely with your page ranking. This description should generally be kept to about 160 characters. With the advent of Twitter, it shouldn't be hard to come up with a page description in the same amount of space it takes you to tweet about your breakfast. Look at the image below. This is a screen print of the description that is displayed when you search for my site, Flying Tomato Design. You'll note that the description for the home page is too long - it gets cut off. So, I need to change that. However, you'll notice that the description tag for the contact page is a great length.
Meta Keywords Tag
The keywords tag used to be vital to a website. Originally, it was intended as a way to tell search engines the main concept of your site with specific words. However, it didn't take long for web developers to figure out that they could manipulate the search results. Eventually, you would search for "giraffes" and somehow you'd come up with a porn site. It was because people were putting high ranking keywords in their code whether or not the content actually supported it. Today, search engine companies don't really use keywords. However, Yahoo! does put some sort of emphasis on it still.
Meta Robots Tag
This tag tells the search engines whether or not it should follow the links appearing on that page. If you already have a [robots.txt] file, there's no need for this tag. Here are the common commands used with the Meta Robots Tag:
- noindex: this tells the spider not to index that page
- follow: tells the spider to follow the links on that page and index them
- nofollow: tells the spider to not follow the links on the page, but index the page
Other Tags
Here's a list of other tags to use in your code. These are pretty self-explanatory so I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on these.
- <meta name="Copyright" content="Copyright Flying Tomato Design: 2007-2009" />
- <meta name="Author" content="Flying Tomato Design" />
- <meta name="Email" content="office@flyingtomatodesign.com" />
- <meta name="Charset" content="UTF-8" />
- <meta name="Distribution" content="Global" />
- <meta name="Rating" content="General" />
- <meta name="Revisit After" content="1 Day" />
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, most Meta Tags are still important today. They help with your search engine ranking and placement. However, other tags, such as the Keywords tag isn't so useful any more. In our next post, we'll look closer at the Keywords Tag in more detail; why it was so great to begin with, and what search engines do with it now.
5 great Error 404 pages
The 'ol 404 error page. It's a real bummer when you run across one. The typical one looks like this:
I'm embarrassed to say that my own site has a boring old page. However, we're working on redesigning that and it will change. Anyway, here's five great Error 404 pages I found:
These pages just go to show that the design work doesn't stop at the main website pages. It's important to consider the whole web experience. So, if you're a designer, go fix your Error 404 page and make it more interesting (slaps own hand).
Next time, we'll look at how to better use the footer on your web page - that's some prime real estate that's often not being maximized.
Stop the ride. I wanna get off.
Change. I change my clothes, my son's diaper, my mind - often multiple times a day. Heck, change is so intertwined in our lives that we make changes on the way to work; radio stations, lanes, MPH, etc. Our lives and the world around us is in a constant state of flux.
So then, how do you stay on top (never mind the cutting edge) of an industry that is constantly changing?
The web design industry is built on change. On one hand, it's great. Yesterday, we had to use Flash in order to have a dynamic website. Today, we can use better JavaScript like JQuery to do it. Tomorrow, we will use HTML5. Truly without change, our art, our passion would grow stale. However, it can be seriously dizzying!
I just read a retrospective article a few weeks ago about design trends for 2009. Then today, I read one about design trends of 2010 so far. Wait. I just got the hang of the "look" for 2009. Crap. I won't "get" 2010 for at least another 6 months. I know I said it just a moment ago, but I feel like the room is spinning.
Since I am spinning in circles, that takes us back to the beginning: "How do you stay on top of an industry that's constantly changing?"
Well I think that it will be different for each person. However, for me that involves a lot of research and reading. I have a short list of sites that I visit when I'm in need of some inspiration. Probably the one site I visit most often is Smashing Magazine, though. I also have been studying up on not only the more obscure features of CSS2, but am starting to dive in to CSS3. It won't be long before it will be the new standard and all browsers will support it en masse.
More importantly for me though, is that I start doing. I will look at a design that I admire and try to reverse engineer it. I figure out how the interactive elements work and what it takes to make them work well. I look at the design and try to replicate it with my own touch. I dissect the CSS so I can get an even better grasp of how it is affecting the layout and styling of the site.
Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to stay on top of the wave or even get ahead of it. I don't know if I ever will. I don't know if that's really important, though, either. For me, it's constantly a process of self improvement and discovery. That's why I love this industry so much. That is why I love my job so much. I get a chance to learn something new every day. Moreover, I get to do something that's challenging and in the end, very rewarding.
So, ya - this changing industry can be dizzying. But, it's also a small picture of the world around us. I suppose if you have a hard time accepting change in your daily life, then you probably don't want to consider web design. However, if you can embrace the change for what it is; a daily challenge to improve yourself and give back to others, then you'll do just fine.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go change another diaper.
Flash vs HTML5
The battle between Flash and HTML5 has been heating up lately. There's a lot of debate not only by the people who know what goes into Flash and HTML5, but also from the general public.
You can't really surf the web without catching an argument about how Flash is bloated and overall crap and that HTML5 is the savior of the interwebs. Gizmodo, Crunchgear, and Endgadget are just a few sites that talk about the subject. However, now you have Apple going head to head with Adobe in the last few months. First when the iPhone came out, it was annoying that they didn't allow Flash on it. However, most people forgave Apple because they figured that, well, it's a cell phone and other manufacturers make the rules to govern their phones, why not Apple? Then Apple rolls out the iPad. (side note, I've played with one and I still think it's an oversized, overpriced iPod Touch.) Anyway, the iPad doesn't support Flash. Rather, Apple is trying to push their codec, H.264. They've been using it for the last few years to encode video files for the iPod Touch and iPhones. It's a good format, but hell, there's better out there. So, here's the disturbing thing; Apple's show of obstinance is actually winning them ground! You've actually got website owners willing to ditch Flash just so their site will work on that POS iPad. I find that utterly rediculous! Why should we, the web developers bow to Apple's wishes? Personally, I don't necessarily like Flash en masse. It has it's merits in certain situations, though. However, when one company is trying to bend the rules to their favor, that's when we should all stop and take stock of what's going on here. I mean, rather than everyone bowing to Apple, why not push back and say, "nope, we're not going to give in to your closed system".
Okay, I'm sorry, I can tend to rattle on and I have a few gripes with Apple lately so, I'll try to keep on course.
Anyway, like I said above, Flash has it's merits. Personally, I don't like building entire websites out of Flash. Primarily because they can't be read by search engines and therefore it's much more difficult to correctly optimize them. I think HTML5 is great and if you've seen some of the demos out there, it's really impressive. Heck, never mind the demos, take a look at YouTube. Yup. YouTube is now all HTML5. However, I don't think that HTML5 is 100% our answer to a smoother web surfing experience. Granted, I think it's a big piece of the puzzle. However, I think the responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of web developers to stop building shitty sites and to start doing it right. They need to quit cutting corners and put in the time, hard work, and effort to make a site great using whatever technology that site requires. Too many people pigeon-hole themselves and refuse to grow beyond what they're comfortable; be it Flash, HTML, or other.
As I've said before, I'm not a huge fan of Flash. However, I'll use it if I have to. I have a client that wanted a full Flash website. So, knowing it's SEO limitations, I built a Flash landing page (my thoughts on those another time) and built the rest of the site using jQuery. The site is interactive like she wanted, but it now works well with SEO techniques. So ultimately, she really is the big winner here.
Anyway, if I can leave you with just one thought, it would be this; HTML5 is Friggin' awesome and Flash is bloated. However, in order to build a web surfing experience that is interactive, exciting, and smooth, we need to leverage all of the technologies. Moreover, it's not up to big companies to decide for us what that will look like.
