Meta Tags - HTML Meta Tags
As you learn how to code a web page and the ins and outs of search engine optimization you will see references to something called meta tags.
What are HTML Meta Tags?
HTML meta tags are coding inserted in the head section of the web page that is not seen by the page visitor but communicates information to the browser and some search engines. You can use the HTML meta tags to specify information about the web document.
Note: The coding examples below are for HTML 4.01. If you are coding using XHTML, you will have to adjust the coding as required.
Meta Element
The meta element has two parts, a property and a value assigned to that property.
<meta name="propertyname" content="propertyvalue">
where:
name identifies the property with a property name
content sets the property's value
http-equiv
http-equiv is used instead of name to communicate information to the http server for the http response message headers.
Specifying Default Document Information
The meta tag can be used to set default information for the web document.
Character Encoding
To set the character encoding for the document the meta tag would be written as follows:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=ISO-8859-1">
To learn more about character encoding read Character Encoding.
Script Language
The script language for the web document can also be specified using a meta tag:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Script-Type"
content="type">
where type is one of the following:
text/ecmascript
text/javascript
text/jscript
text/vbscript
text/vbs
text/xml
Stylesheet
The stylesheet for the web document can be specified as follows:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type"
content="text/css">
Search Engine Optimization Meta Tags
Some search engines use the information contained in the keywords meta tag and the description meta tag when indexing your web page.
<meta name="Description" content="Your
description">
<meta name="Keywords" content="Your set of keywords for
the page">
Basic Meta Tags
There some basic meta tags to include in your web page also:
- Title Tag - not a meta tag, but important for search engine optimization.
- Robots Meta Tag - include if you do not have access to the robot.txt file.
- Author Meta Tag - required to pass accessibility testing.
To learn more about meta tags, see our Basic Meta Tags article.
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