Meta Medic And Other Great Tools Help Tune Up Your Webpage
Written: Jul 17 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: No cost and fairly easy to use.
Cons: More powerful tools will require some knowledge of HTML use.
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| Schinjay's Full Review: Meta Medic |
You’ve Got a Web Page and Bowser’s Got Pups
These Web Tools Help You Get The Word Out
So, you’ve got yourself a web page. You bought some fancy page building software; you rolled up your sleeves and you came up with a virtual masterpiece. You’ve got a homepage with your face plastered all over it. Your wife has her favorite recipes proudly exhibited. And the piece de resistance is Bowser’s page with all of those close-ups of the 10-pup litter she just presented to the world. WOW! Did you ever go all out!
Now you’ve done your research and found a great free web space provider that will help you get your page onto the Internet. It’s been about a week now and suddenly you come to the realization that nobody is logging on and e-mailing offers to take any of those pups off your hands.
What’s the deal? How do I let people know that the litter is in? That I am no longer a webless nerd? How can I be sure my web voice will be heard?
Well, for all of us HTML unwashed, there are some free web tools you can use to make sure your work of art is accessible to as many Internet dog lovers as possible.
Your web page setup needs to contain the proper description and keywords so that Internet searches can easily find you. These are hidden as “Meta Tags” in the HTML language that makes up your web page. Most of us new web publishers wouldn’t know HTML language from baby talk. Goo-goo, gaa-gaa? See, I told you!
Before you dive into the world of HTML language and the “Meta Tags” that feed search engines information about your web page, you should learn something about what these tags look like. You can find a wealth of knowledge about these subjects at http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/meta.html .
At the end of this primer there are some excellent links to additional information on HTML Meta Tags and some additional tools to test the tags inserted in the HTML language on your web page.
You should also check out the HTML discussions at “Dr. Clues” site at http://www.drclue.net/F1.cgi/HTML/META/META.html . After perusing this information you will better understand what the other web tools we use are talking about.
The first web tool I tried out on my own web page was “Meta Medic” at http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html#caveats . This tool reads the HTML Meta Tag information from your web page and shows you exactly how it is currently setup. It advises you if your tags are too long and if they are acceptable to the most common search engines.
“Meta Medic” will also show you a simulation of how your site would be listed in a search without the use of all of the tags. This is pretty cool and can be a real eye-opener. I learned that what’s in the description and first paragraph or so of your web page text might be all that a search engine reads. This let’s you adjust your web page accordingly.
Next I went to “Site Up” at http://www.siteup.com/meta.html and downloaded their simple Meta Tag Generator program. Run this program on your system and it will ask you to fill in the information you wish to use for your web page description and keywords and it will generate text you can paste into the HTML code of your page. The code produced here proved to be very concise, clean and functional.
Another very comprehensive tool, “NetMechanic”, at http://www.netmechanic.com/maintain.htm will analyze your web page and e-mail you a thorough report on what it found tucked into the HTML language of your site.
“NetMechanic” will advise you on the validity of links, state of the HTML language, browser compatibility, loading time and spelling errors encountered on your site. When I ran this on my site it did a pretty good job of showing me HTML trouble spots that needed attention.
This site prepares a pretty sophisticated set of reports. You’ll nee to be well versed in HTML to try to make all the changes it proposes. Of course, for a fee, you can join “NetMechanic” and let them repair your site according to its findings. I didn’t try this, but I’ve heard from others that it does a pretty good job.
I like using Microsoft’s FrontPage to maintain my web page because it’s very easy to access the HTML view and paste additions into it. I recommend you copy the text generated by any Meta Tag generating program into your Windows Notepad and save it first. It worked better for me when I copied the text from Notepad and then pasted the code into a clean new line in the HTML view of my web page.
Now that you’ve whipped your Meta Tags into shape, steer yourself to http://www.all4one.com/all4submit/ and submit your web page address to some of the most popular search engines on the web. With one click your web page will be submitted to the AltaVista, Excite, Hotbot, Lycos, Infoseek and Webcrawler search engines. After a week or so, anyone typing in the proper description or keywords at these search sites will have your site pop up in their search results. Puppy bucks, come to pappa!
Now you can be sure that when Aunt Edna jumps online and wants to see those new puppies, she’ll be able to find your web page, fall in love and maybe take one of those noisy little buggars off your hands.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Schinjay
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Member: Steve Schindler
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Reviews written: 37
Trusted by: 58 members
About Me:
Steve Schindler writes his informative and humorous "Schindler's Cyber List" for epinions.com.
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