= MetaTags
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugin for Ruby on Rails applications.
== Rails 3
MetaTags master branch is now fully supports Rails 3 and is backward
compatible.
== Installation
There are two options when approaching meta-tags installation:
* using the gem (recommended)
* install as a Rails plugin
To install as a gem, add this to your environment.rb:
config.gem 'meta-tags', :lib => 'meta_tags'
And then run the command:
sudo rake gems:install
To install meta-tags as a Rails plugin use this:
script/plugin install git://github.com/kpumuk/meta-tags.git
== Titles
Page titles are very important for Search engines. The titles in the
browser are displayed in the title bar. The search engines would look at
the this title bar to determine what the page is all about.
Some Page TitlePage Title | Site Title
Recommended title tag length: up to 70 characters, 10 words.
== Description
Description tags are called meta tags as they are not displayed by the
browsers as that of titles. But these descriptions may be displayed by
some search engines. They are used to describe the contents of a page in
2 or 3 sentences.
Recommended description tag length: up to 160 characters.
== Keywords
Meta keywords tag are used to place your keywords that you think a
surfer would search in Search engines. Repeating keywords unnecessarily
would be considered spam and you may get permanently banned from SERP's
Recommended keywords tag length: up to 255 characters, 20 words.
== Noindex
By using the noindex meta tag, you can signal to search engines to not
include specific pages in their indexes.
This is useful for pages like login, password reset, privacy policy, etc.
Further reading:
* Blocking Google http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93708
* Using meta tags to block access to your site http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93710
== Nofollow
Nofollow meta tag tells a search engine not to follow the links on a specific
page. It's entirely likely that a robot might find the same links on some
other page without a nofollow (perhaps on some other site), and so
still arrives at your undesired page.
Further reading:
* About rel="nofollow" http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=96569
* Meta tags http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79812
== Canonical URL
Canonical link element tells a search engine what is the canonical or main URL
for a content which have multiple URLs. The search engine will always return
that URL, and link popularity and authority will be applied to that URL.
Further reading:
* About rel="canonical" http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
* Canonicalization http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139066
== MetaTags Usage
First, add this code to your main layout:
<%= display_meta_tags :site => 'My website' %>
Then, to set the page title, add this to each of your views (see below for other options):
<%= title 'My page title' %>
When views are rendered, the page title will be included in the right spots:
My website | My page title
My page title
You can find allowed options for +display_meta_tags+ method below.
=== Using MetaTags in controller
You can define following instance variables:
@page_title = 'Member Login'
@page_description = 'Member login page.'
@page_keywords = 'Site, Login, Members'
Also you could use +set_meta_tags+ method to define all meta tags simultaneously:
set_meta_tags :title => 'Member Login',
:description => 'Member login page.',
:keywords => 'Site, Login, Members'
You can find allowed options for +set_meta_tags+ method below.
=== Using MetaTags in view
To set meta tags you can use following methods:
<% title 'Member Login' %>
<% description 'Member login page.' %>
<% keywords 'Member login page.' %>
Also there is +set_meta_tags+ method exists:
<% set_meta_tags :title => 'Member Login',
:description => 'Member login page.',
:keywords => 'Site, Login, Members' %>
The +title+ method returns title itself, so you can use it to show the title
somewhere on the page:
<%= title 'Member Login' %>
If you want to set the title and display another text, use this:
<%= title 'Member Login', 'Here you can login to the site:' %>
=== Allowed options for +display_meta_tags+ and +set_meta_tags+ methods
Use these options to customize the title format:
* :site -- site title;
* :title -- page title;
* :description -- page description;
* :keywords -- page keywords;
* :prefix -- text between site name and separator;
* :separator -- text used to separate website name from page title;
* :suffix -- text between separator and page title;
* :lowercase -- when true, the page name will be lowercase;
* :reverse -- when true, the page and site names will be reversed;
* :noindex -- add noindex meta tag; when true, 'robots' will be used, otherwise the string will be used;
* :nofollow -- add nofollow meta tag; when true, 'robots' will be used, otherwise the string will be used;
* :canonical -- add canonical link tag.
And here are a few examples to give you ideas.
<%= display_meta_tags :separator => "—" %>
<%= display_meta_tags :prefix => false, :separator => ":" %>
<%= display_meta_tags :lowercase => true %>
<%= display_meta_tags :reverse => true, :prefix => false %>
=== Allowed values
You can specify :title as a string or array:
set_meta_tags :title => ['part1', 'part2'], :site => 'site'
# site | part1 | part2
set_meta_tags :title => ['part1', 'part2'], :reverse => true, :site => 'site'
# part2 | part1 | site
Keywords can be passed as string of comma-separated values, or as an array:
set_meta_tags :keywords => ['tag1', 'tag2']
# tag1, tag2
Description is a string (HTML will be stripped from output string).
== Alternatives
There are several plugins influenced me to create this one:
* Headliner: http://github.com/mokolabs/headliner
* meta_on_rals: http://github.com/ashchan/meta_on_rails
== Credits
* Dmytro Shteflyuk (author) http://kpumuk.info
* Morgan Roderick (contributor) http://roderick.dk
* Sergio Cambra (contributor)
* Kristoffer Renholm (contributor)