Creating Meta Tags With Dreamweaver CS4

Dec 31st 09 Posted by Andrew Whiteman in Web Design

A web page has two main areas: the head element and the body element. The body element contains all of the visible content which will be displayed in the browser window. The head element, by contrast, is designed to contain information about the web page; meta information as it is sometimes called. In this article, we will look at the different ways in which Dreamweaver allows users to modify elements within the head of a web page. Let\’s start with the title.

The title element is meant to contain a broad description of the content of the page. It is extremely important that each page should have a title element and that the title be pertinent to that page. Dreamweaver automatically adds a title element to every new page with the default text \”Untitled Document\”. Perhaps the easiest way of modifying this default title is simply to enter a new title in the Document Title box of the Document toolbar which is normally displayed at the top of the page. An alternative method is the choose Modify – Page Properties and then click on the Title/Encoding category on the left of the screen.

The title element is the only element which is required to be placed within the head element. In addition a number of optional meta elements may be placed in the head area to provide further information about the current page. One such meta element is generated automatically by Dreamweaver along with the title: the content-type. This declares the character encoding for the benefit of the browser and is particularly important if you have a site with an international audience. To specify the character encoding, choose Modify – Page Properties, click on the Title/Encoding category on the left of the screen and then choose an Encoding option from the drop-down menu.

The meta description element is one of the most important since, along with the page title, it is often displayed when your page shows up in the search engine results. The description should consist of a couple of sentences summarising the content of the page. To set the description in Dreamweaver, choose Insert – HTML – Head Tags – Description then enter your description in the dialogue box which appears.

There are a lot of other meta tags which can be added inside the head element. However, let\’s just mention one more: keywords. The keywords meta element should contain a list of the important phrases and words which occur on the current page. Only text that actually appears on the page should figure in the keywords. To create the keywords meta tag in Dreamweaver, choose Insert – HTML – Head Tags – Keywords.

The author is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent computer training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver Classes in London and throughout the UK.