Contents
HTML meta: Main Tips
- With
metatags, 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
metatag, keywords, descriptions, and other information can be specified for the page. - HTML
metatags must be placed inside the <head> element. - You can use one or multiple
metatags 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.
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.