I really would like to know if this code in the mate is required? meaning does your web site need this to get indexed??? <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"><title>Ganoderma</title>
Hello, Aaron111. The meta line tells the browser what character set was used to write the page. It helps the browser to interpret it correctly. The title is useful for search engine optimization (SEO), as it tells the search engines which is the main topic of your page. It has also a lot of other uses, as in bookmarking. Neither of the two is mandatory.
If you are relying on your server's (or hoster's server's) to set your documents as type/html and charset=whatever, no... but everyone does. Those meta tags are really supposed to be HTTP Headers (your server tells everyone what type of file it is) but browsers got in the habit of looking at those meta tags too. So, if you say in your meta tag charset="iso-8859-1" and your server is really sending them as UTF-8 then there can be problems... the server overrides the meta tag in this case. So, if you've got them for one, you should just stick them on all. <title> tag is actually necessary, at least for HTML4/XHTML strict. If you don't have a title tag, the validator will try to say you don't have a closing head tag </head> even when you do. To be smart about it, let your title be a little more descriptive about each page. They don't all have to have the same title : )
Nice above that's very thoughtful. to the point Im rendering to say that using different titles in my pages would be a good idea
the charset definition in meta tags also is needed for correct interpretation by validator and by SE as well as an undefined page may have multiple possible meanings in many characters. hence the use of a CHARSET DEFINITION in pages is default to be safe and precise in presenting content. the title tag is the firs priority in indexing to achieve highest SERPS if all else is equally SEO'd as your competitior's pages. same for description meta tags. hence each and every pages should have an individualized/optimiezed title/description meta tag to achieve best SERPS the result of such individual page optimization is that you have for example 4000+ "entry pages" in your access log stats ( i have such numbers of entry pages ). because there might be many thousand different ways to find your domain via every single content page if each is SEO'd
You're right, Hans, technically you need both for the validator-- I was wrong, you can't get away with omitting them. It's just that any machine recieving your page should truly be getting that info from the server (apparently there's a teacher at a university who's telling his students to use XHTML1.1 and a student went to a forum as asked, how can this work? It worked because the server was trying to send as Content-Type=text/html which you cannot actually do with XHTML1.1 but IE browsers only considered what the server called them). Yup. It's not a bad idea to put a few keywords in your title. NOt stuffing, just a few. Like on a site I'm doing that sells motorcycle insurance, the main page has the basics, but the page with lots of content, I name them stuff like "nameofsite.com-- Get a quote" or for the page with the warning about a change in motorcycle laws, the title is "nameofsite.com - new laws for riders!" Keep it short but a lot of people don't utilise the title tag to its full advantage. Also, the meta tag "description" is often that little bit of text you see on search engine pages. As someone looking for something, I read those little pieces of text to see if they are using my search query in the context I'm looking for, and so do many other people. But make it full, semantic sentences... none of this meta name="description" content="get rich quick with nameofsite.com fast quick easy no purchase necessary void where prohibited offer only available in states whose names begin with M and W drive your car on our organic fuel make lots of money selling biodiesel easy money blah blah blah yakkity schmakkity etc" Is that readable? Does it look like anything you want to read? No. So be careful. Rule of thumb: if you think your description is too long, it probably is. Same goes for keywords.