Forum Moderators: open
Is there any way to have meta data like title and keyword tags automatically filled with relation to some content / heading on a particular page.
I have seen similar techniques, where say an online DVD store would have the title of a page as the title of the DVD on the current page they are viewing... automatically.
? i am really curious about this sort of tactic, can it be done? and is it effective in terms of Search Engine indexing?
Webstudio
I use ASP and a database to provide different meta tags for dynamic pages. It works by pulling three fields from the database, (title, description and keywords), depending on a variable passed to the page, i.e www.foo.org/test.asp?p=2
p=2 where 2 is the index key value of a record in the database.
I allows great flexibility if some keywords aren't working they can simply be changed.
Condor12
It can be done and it can be effective SEO. It's most effective where there are too many pages to tag by hand but can also be used to ensure forum post and news stories, etc, have matching meta data for their content.
It's not something you can do with HTML or clientside scripting (JavaScript, etc).
You'll need server side scripting (ASP, PHP, etc) and probably a database too. I say "probably" because you could, if you wanted to, fight with scraping data from your own files.
It works best if page titles and sections are natural keywords anyway. That's why you'll see them in the likes of DVD stores. Jason XX the DVD would be known in the database as both "Horror" and "Jason XX". Just with those two alone, added to some generic DVD meta, you're on your way to fairly nicely targeted dynamic meta tagging.
