Contents
HTML meta: Main Tips
- With
meta
tags, HTML metadata can be defined. - In Greek, meta means beyond. Thus, metadata is not displayed on the web page: it is only parsable by the machine.
- Using the
meta
tag, keywords, descriptions, and other information can be specified for the page. - HTML
meta
tags must be placed inside the <head> element. - You can use one or multiple
meta
tags in one document.
Using HTML meta Tags
The content between HTML meta
tags is supplementary information about a website which is not displayed in the page:
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="description" content="Learn to code!">
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, PHP, JavaScript">
<meta name="author" content="The BitDegree Team">
</head>
Metadata is useful in search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines use meta keywords to gather information about the content your website offers its users.
Note: you can also set the viewport using your meta tags to control the visible page areas. However, not every browser supports that.
Theory is great, but we recommend digging deeper!
Tag-specific Attributes for <meta>
charset
sets the character encoding for the webpage:
<meta charset="UTF-8">
Tip: defining character encoding helps prevent cross-scripting attacks. You should use UTF-8 or another ASCII-compatible encoding.
name
sets a name for the metadata (e.g., meta keywords
, author
, etc.):
<meta name="description" content="Learn to code">
http-equiv
defines a pragma directive. All the possible values have the same names as certain HTTP headers (i.e., content-security-policy
or refresh
), hence the name:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="30">
content
defines the value for the name
or http-equiv
attribute:
<meta name="description" content="Learn to code">
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, HTML Meta Tag">
scheme
used to set the context in which the value of the content
attribute should have been interpreted (a format):
<meta name="date" content="2019-08-04" scheme="YYYY-MM-DD">
Note: the scheme attribute has been made obsolete in HTML5.
Browser support

Chrome

Edge

Firefox

IE

Opera

Safari
Mobile browser support

Chrome

Firefox

Opera
