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Topic: TUTORIAL: Step-by-Step Guide to building your website (Read 10043 times)
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Berlin-Bob
Global Moderator
RootsChat Marquessate
 Offline
Posts: 4931
by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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7. Extras
What are meta tags?
If you look at any website in your browser, right-click with the mouse and view the "Source text" then at the head of the source you will probably see meta-tags.
Meta-tags give the browser information about the web-page, but don't usually change it's appearance.
They are usually placed between the <head> and </head> tags,
e.g. using my site as an example,
<head>
<title>A Margulies Miscellania</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="author" contents="Berlin-Bob">
<meta name="copyright" contents="Berlin-Bob">
<meta name="date" contents="2005-02-10">
<meta name="description" contents="Family Chronicles of the [... list of surnames ..] Families (and others)">
<meta name="keywords" lang="en" contents="Family History,Genealogy, .... ">
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</head>
You can write your web-pages without any meta-tags, but it's best to have at least the "description" and "keywords" tags, as most search engines use these, when trying to find hits for a particular word or phrase.
The following comments are re-printed here from
Topic: Congratulations Rootschat Webspace!!
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,40326.15.html
see especially replies #6 - #9
Keith ... the KEYWORDS met tag is a string of words that you add that will be the key information that search engines use when someone does a search. if one or more of the words are in your met tag, then your site will be listed much sooner in the search results than if you didn't have that tag. That way, your site should generate more hits. It is not uncommon to have 50, 100 or more keywords in the string.
and my reply
Peter, that is what we are always told, but the big problem is, that most search robots DON'T seem to use the keywords tag !!  So, Keith, you need to put any search terms in the description meta-tag ! Best thing is to put them in both tags, description and keywords, just in case somebody does develop a "keywords-robot" !
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
This is the "standard" character set for most english-language websites.
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
This is another important meta-tag, it tells search engines to index (save in their lists) this page and then "follow" any links you have on your index-page. So if you have lots of pages on your site, the search engine will "see" them all.
<meta name="date" contents="2005-02-10"> (year-month-day !)
Remember to update this one when you change anything on the page,
Some search engines re-act to this one, too, and know that your site is being updated; others just notice that there is a difference between their cached copy and your current web-version.
And remember
The meta tags are just simple text and can be created by typing away ...... although "borrowing" the right ones that someone else has typed in can save a lot of work 
There are many more, but these above are the most important ones 
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« Last Edit: Monday 15 May 06 07:26 BST (UK) by Berlin-Bob »
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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Berlin-Bob
Global Moderator
RootsChat Marquessate
Offline
Posts: 4931
by My Daughter. Chatting to find her Roots !
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12) Getting your website noticed
Once you have your website up and running, you need to get it noticed.
The following "campaign" was provided by julianb and is reproduced here with his permission.
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How to get your RootsChat site noticed.
Step 1 - prepare the ground
Make sure you’ve got appropriate data on your site that will be noticed by search bots – see this thread http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,93490.msg444730.html#msg444730 about meta tags
Step 2 – tell your best genealogical friends
Add to list of RootsChat hosted websites as at http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,23896.0.html by sending a PM to Biker.
Add your website URL to your RootsChat profile.
Step 3 – spin your web wider
Register your site with some general search engines eg:
http://www.google.co.uk/addurl/?continue=/addurl
http://uk.search.yahoo.com/freesubmit/submit - requires registration (but covers excite and alltheweb also)
http://search.msn.co.uk/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2
http://www.ukwizz.com/add-url/index.htm [UK content only]
Step 4 – capture the family history market
Register your site with some key genealogical resource sites:
http://resources.rootsweb.com/~rootslink/addlink.html - for non-RootsWeb hosted sites
http://www.cyndislist.com/submitnewlink.htm
http://surnamesite.com/addalink3.htm
http://www.genealogyportal.com/submit.html
The deal with the following sites is that you are asked to add code to your site in the form of a link:
http://216.71.132.20/listhtml/topsite.html
http://genealogyregister.com/signup.cgi
http://www.genealogy.org/topslist/addsite.asp
http://www.kindredtrails.com/FORM_link.html
Step 5 – Shameless plugging
Indulge in some shameless plugging (Search RootsChat for “shameless plug”, copyright PaulE, and you’ll get the general idea), for example:
Take the opportunity to include hyperlinks to your site (best if they are to a relevant page) in your posts, not just on here but elsewhere eg Genes Reunited and other genealogy message boards
Add your website URL to your profile, if you can, in other genealogy message boards (eg Your family Tree magazine)
Use your website URL on surname boards wherever possible
Step 6 - Keep it moving
Make sure you make changes, even if only minor, to your site on a regular basis. This should increase your noticeability by search engine bots
JULIAN
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Updated: 29.12.2006
See an analysis of the results here:
Topic: Am I getting my RootsChat FH website noticed?
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,204122.0.html
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« Last Edit: Friday 29 December 06 15:25 GMT (UK) by Berlin-Bob »
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Searching for Coleman, Moore, Kallnung in London; Margulies, Remenyi in E. Europe; Ancestors of Hessie Stevenson-Coleman-Baxter (Ireland, 1861) and, of course, any other ancestors for my web-site http://boco.rootschat.net All Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) |
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