What Does a Stone Mason Know About Meta Tags?

Christoph Gabriel, of Garbriel Steindesigns, is a stone mason in Germany. Taking a look at his site you will find a clean design that is easy navigate, and code that was so well marked that navigating through it was easy as well. While looking at his code I noticed he was following DCMI’s method to use meta tags. Not familiar with DCMI? Read on.

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

Gabriel is not just using meta tags for his site, but he is using them in a way that conforms to the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, (DCMI).

Here is a sample of the code used on his site:

<link rel=”schema.DC” href=”http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/” />
<link rel=”schema.DCTERMS” href=”http://purl.org/dc/terms/” />
<meta name=”DC.title” content=”gabriel-steindesign-metaangaben” />
<meta name=”DC.keywords” content=”Steinmetz, Grabmal, Grabdenkmal, Grabmalentwurf, Grabsteinentwurf” />
<meta name=”DC.creator” content=”Christoph Gabriel-Steinbildhauermeister” />
<meta name=”DC.subject” content=”Entwurf von Natursteinobjekten, Grabsteingestaltung” />
<meta name=”DC.description” content=”Entwurf und Gestaltung” />
<meta name=”DC.publisher” content=”Christoph Gabriel-gabriel steindesign” />

Notice the “DC.” within the names of the meta tags. The DC is to let search engines and browsers understand that their could be a diacritic encoded character. An example would be having a title with Ñ in it. Notice the tilda above the N. It also identifies delimiters like –, double  dashes. With the right combination these little items could reek havoc on your site. When using DCMI’s method, those tricky little characters are now properly identified, and your worries are over.

Having special characters like the Ñ in the United States isn’t usually a big problem if you are authoring your own content, but what if your site allows others to create and title their own content? Special characters start popping up everywhere, especially on a busy site that attracts a global audience. DCMI could be a nice fix to make those meta tags read correctly.

Is It Over The Top?

So does the Garbriel Steindesigns site really need all this special DCMI meta stuff? Probably not. The site is in German though, so special characters can certainly be an issue. Meta tags in general are considered a non-essential items to a web page. This means, that they are only non-essential to layout of site. Meta tags do however offer a wealth of information to the devices that read them, such as search engines, and to skip on on using them would be to your disadvantage.

The more information that we can supply to automated readers about our site the better. Supplying that information to those readers without errors, will ensure its chances of actually getting it read. Is it over the top? I don’t think so.