The Metadata settings are used by search engines to search your web site. The fields in the Metadata Settings are shown in Figure 10-13.
In the Site Meta Description field, you can enter a brief description of your web site that will be used by search engines for searching your web site (the description will be indexed by search engine spiders). This information will be displayed with your web site name when users perform a search via any search engine, as shown in Figure 10-14. The description should be to the point and explanatory because the user will decide whether to visit the site depending on the description given. It is best to limit the description to 20 words because any extra words will be ignored by the search engines.
In the Site Meta Keywords field, you can enter the keywords that best describe your web site to improve the capability of search engine spiders to index the site. You should enter keywords that briefly and precisely explain the products, services, facilities, and so on provided by your organization. The keywords should be limited to a total of 1,000 characters because the search engines will not read more than that. Separate the keywords with a comma. Think about the keywords that are likely to be searched from the visitor’s point of view and include them in the keywords list.
Note Search engines such as Google do not currently use any content in the Meta Keywords section when indexing.
Let’s specify a meta description and some keywords for the web site. Assuming that the site sells computer books and tutorial CDs, publishes computer-related articles, and offers virtual classes, let’s set the Global Site Meta Description and Global Site Meta Keywords as shown in Figure 10-15.
You can see the meta description and keywords from the front end of the Joomla web site. Just right- click the web site and select View Source from the shortcut menu that appears. You might see something like the following:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” xml:lang=”en-gb” lang=”en-gb” dir=”ltr”>
<head>
<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0″ />
<base href=”http://bmharwani.net/” />
<meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″ />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Computer Articles, Books, Tutorial DVD, Virtual Classes” />
<meta name=”description” content=”bmharwani blog, latest computer articles, computer books, tutorial
dvds. Welcome to B.M. Harwani’s web site” />
<meta name=”generator” content=”Joomla! – Open Source Content Management” />
<title>Home</title>
Notice that the <meta name=”keywords”> and <meta name=”description”> tags display what you specified in these fields in the Global Configuration settings.
Each article on your web site can have its own meta information. Let’s open the “Latest Cameras” article that you created in Chapter 3. When the article is displayed, view the source code, which should look something like the following. Notice that the <title> tag shows the title of the article as Latest Cameras, which may be used by search engines.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” xml:lang=”en-gb” lang=”en-gb” dir=”ltr”>
<head>
<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0″ />
<base href=”http://bmharwani.net/index.php/en/newelectronics/12-camera/7-latest-cameras” />
<meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″ />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”night vision, zoom, camera, high megapixel resolution” />
<meta name=”author” content=”Super User” />
<meta name=”description” content=”bmharwani blog, latest computer articles, computer books, tutorial
dvds. Welcome to B.M. Harwani’s web site” />
<meta name=”generator” content=”Joomla! – Open Source Content Management” />
<title>Latest Cameras</title>
The Show Author Meta Tag option allows you to show the author meta information for each article— information about the creator of the article. This information is used by search engine spiders when indexing the site. Note the <meta name=”author”> tag in the preceding source code. If you set the value of the Show Author Meta Tag option to No, this tag will disappear from the source code.
Source: Harwani B M (2015), Foundations of Joomla!, Apress; 2nd ed edition