HTML Meta basics

[Cdmar]

The head element contains general information (meta-information) about a document. HTML also includes a meta element that goes inside the head element. The purpose of the meta element is to provide meta-information about the document. Most often the meta element is used to provide information that is relevant to browsers or search engines like describing the content of your document.

Some search engines on the WWW will use the name and content attributes of the meta tag to index your pages.

This meta element defines a description of your page:

<meta name="description" content="Free Web tutorials on HTML, CSS, XML, and XHTML" />

This meta element defines keywords for your page:

<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, DHTML, CSS, XML, XHTML, JavaScript" />

The intention of the name and content attributes is to describe the content of a page.

However, since too many webmasters have used meta tags for spamming, like repeating keywords to give pages a higher ranking, some search engines have stopped using them entirely.

[Lennart]

Other important Meta-tags:

Code:

You are not allowed to see code.

Names the author

Code:

You are not allowed to see code.

specifys charset and content

Code:

You are not allowed to see code.

tells the robots to index everything.