dynamic meta-tags

will the search bots find them?

[lorax]

I've built a site which uses PHP includes for the keyword and description meta tags. The question is - will a search bot read these tags? I thought they would because the bots are using http which would mean the web server has to serve the pages (and all scripting would be executed) but now I'm not so sure my logic is on the right track.

[WebGuerrilla]

Hi lorax,

Welcome to WmW

Don't worry, your logic is on track.:) Any server side includes are executed before the spider ever sees the page. It won't cause any problems. Many sites handle their meta data in this way.

However, one thing to consider. Using includes for your meta info usually means that you are repeating titles/decriptions across multiple pages, which isn't the best idea. Having titles and descriptions that are unique to the content on each individual page will produce much more traffic.

[lorax]

re: specific tags for each page.

I am aware of this though the content is dynamic as well. The best I could do is to customize the tags to represent a category of info found on each page.

Thanks for both the info and the welcome.