Does anybody know? Are there any problems associated with repeating HTML Meta Tags on a single page?

For example:

<META name="description" content="This description appears on all pages.">
<META name="keywords" content="these,keywords,appear,on,all,pages">
 
<META name="description" content="This description only appears on this page.">
<META name="keywords" content="these,keywords,only,appear,on,this,page">

why repeat them ? i don't know if they will do good or wrong if repeated but normally they are written once

Originally Posted by atouck

why repeat them ?

Good question....

I'm no guru on this.

When building a site I often create a template with a fixed header and footer that I can apply to all pages. In the header (of the template) I apply the Meta Tags that I want to appear on all pages.

Then I create a new page and apply the template (which has the common Meta Tags included) but I want extra tags for this page. The original tags are not editable in the new page, so I was wondering how the bots handled more than one of the same tag.

Incidentally, I've seen this done on many sites before, just don't know the mechanics of it.

Compiler automatically takes first meta tag..that for sure..

Is PHP not available?

make the original tags editable in the template then i.e. make an editable region around them

What is all this template stuff about?

Originally Posted by davemies

make the original tags editable in the template then i.e. make an editable region around them

That makes sense, I'll give it a try and see what happens.

Originally Posted by wayfarer07

What is all this template stuff about?

Templates make multi page sites a lot easier to manage. On most sites the header and the footer of the page remain the same. Let's try an example.

Let's assume you have a 50 page website where the company address and telephone number are displayed in the footer of evey page. Then the company moves offices. You would have to alter the address and telephone number on 50 different pages, a lot of hard work. If you've used a template, you only have to update the template once and all 50 pages are automatically updated.

Originally Posted by davemies

make the original tags editable in the template then i.e. make an editable region around them

Only half works. You can put the meta tags into an editable region in the template, and you can then edit them (or add to them) in the document without any problems.

However, if you've edited the tag in the document and later want to alter the tags in the template, it can't update the document anymore. You don't seem to be able to have tags editable in both the template and the document.

I seem to have three options.

1) Place the tags in the template, and then duplicate them in the document (which is why I asked the original question).

2) Don't place the tags in the template at all, and then create new tags in each document.

3) Place the tags in the template and leave them the same on every document.

You can tell I'm not very good at this, can't you?

Still, nobody seems to know if there are any problems associated with duplicating the meta tags on the same page.

Do you have PHP available for the templates?

PHP Code:

if($tag == ''){$tag = 'Default, set, of tags';}
echo '<meta name="keywords" content="'.$tag.'">'; 


Let's say that's part of the file header.php in the actual documents you'd just need

PHP Code:

$tag = 'Custom, list, of, tags';
require_once('header.php'); 


If you didn't set $tag in the page it'd just use the default set in the template.

Originally Posted by Arenlor

Do you have PHP available for the templates?

Yes, I do have PHP available but I think it's a bit of an overkill just to solve this particular problem. I like PHP, but I'm not the most proficient in it, so I don't use it where I don't have to.

There are a dozen ways to circumnavigate the problem but we've gone a bit off topic by trying other solutions.

I really just wanted to know if anybody knew how the crawlers reacted when they come accross meta tags that are duplicated on a single page, each one with different comments.

Do they just read the first occurance? the last occurance? or do they read them all and append them?

I appreciate your suggestion though.

Yes, I do have PHP available but I think it's a bit of an overkill just to solve this particular problem.

Actually it is BY FAR the simplest solution.

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/html-f...body-main.html
http://www.webmaster-talk.com/html-f...-question.html

For example I actually have a set of templates for all my sites.
index.php

PHP Code:

<?php require_once('conn.php');
$head_title = 'A Title';
require_once('header.php');?>
<?php require_once('footer.php');?>

conn.php

PHP Code:

<?php $conn = mysql_connect('localhost','username','KittyKat124!?!'); $db = mysql_select_db('database');?>

header.php

PHP Code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> 
<html lang="en"> 
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8"> 
<title><?php echo $head_title;?></title> 
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> 
<meta name="description" content=""> 
<meta name="keywords" content=""> 
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> 
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles.css"> 
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico"> 
<link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico"> 
</head> 
<body>

styles.css

PHP Code:

body {background-color:#FFFFFF;color:#000000;}
h1 {text-align:center;}
a:link {background-color:#FFFFFF;color:#0000FF;}
a:visited {background-color:#FFFFFF;color:#FF0000;}
a:hover {background-color:#FFFFFF;color:#FF00FF;}
a:active {background-color:#FFFFFF;color:#00FF00;}
div.center {text-align:center;} 


footer.php

PHP Code:

<div class="center"><p>&#169; <a href="http://www.arenlor.com">Arenlor</a> 2008</p></div></body></html> 


robots.txt

PHP Code:

User-agent: *
Disallow:
User-agent: *
Allow: / 


I just fill in the blanks where needed and it's done.

This is one of those threads that's gone way off topic....

Originally Posted by minsky

Does anybody know? Are there any problems associated with repeating HTML Meta Tags on a single page?

I realise there are loads of ways to solve the problem. I just wondered if anybody knew what happened if you did duplicate the tags.

Try it and let us know!

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/stru...l.html#h-7.4.4 from the description within of search engines using the lang attribute I'd suggest against using multiple tags unless they have multiple languages.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Try it and let us know!

I don't mind trying it, but I wouldn't have any way to Analyse the results.

Originally Posted by Arenlor

I'd suggest against using multiple tags unless they have multiple languages.

Yes, I agree it's considered a bad practice and I won't be doing it, but it's surprising (when you right click and view source) just how many websites do. I view source a lot and have often noticed tag being repeated.

Incidentally, I'm a self taught web builder (novice really) and don't have any expertise to fall on when I need it. That's why I ask these dumb questions. I love forums....

No one really knows all of the criteria search engines use but I would be worried that the engines would think you are trying to out smart them and penalize you.