HTML Meta Tags

HTML Meta Tags

Meta tags specify metadata about the document. Metadata is information about a document and not the content of document and usually include items like author, keywords, date and time of publishing the content, etc. Meta element is used and has name/value pairs describing metadata. The <meta> tag being a empty element does not have a closing tag, but have information in attributes.

Metadata given by meta tag is important part of webpage as it helps search engines to index the webpage as per different search criteria so as to find best match for a user search. Search engines usually scan keywords on the webpage for its relevance. <meta> tags are placed between <head> and </head> tags and its attributes are discussed

Attribute Detail
Name Name of property like keywords, description, author etc.
content Value of the property’.
scheme How to interpret value of property (given in content attribute).
http-equiv http response message headers details like to refresh the page or to set a cookie. Values include content-type, expires, refresh and set-cookie.

Attributes with examples are listed

Keywords – It is used by search engines for indexing a web page and is given by

<head>

<meta name=”keywords” content=”Vskills, HTML, Certification” />

</head>

Description – It is also used by search engines for indexing the web page as it provides some information about the web page and it is given by

<head>

<meta name=”description” content=”Certification in HTML.” />

</head>

Revision date – It is to indicate last update time of the document and is given by

<head>

<meta name=”revised” content=”Vskills, 6/12/2011″ />

</head>

Refreshing – It specifies duration after which web page will refresh itself and for a 15 seconds refresh is given by

<head>

<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”15″ />

</head>

Page Redirection – It is for redirecting to another web page using meta tag and usually used with refresh but if no refresh value is given then redirection takes place immediately.

<head>

<meta http-equiv=”refresh”

content=”15; url=http://www.vskills.in” />

</head>

Cookies – They store data on client computers to be used by web server for tracking a web page visitor.

<head>

<meta http-equiv=”cookie” content=”userid=new; course=HTML;

expires=Wednesday, 18-Jun-12 23:59:59 GMT;” /> </head>

If no expiration date and time is given, cookie becomes a session cookie and is deleted when the user closes the browser.

Author – It is given as

<head>

<meta name=”author” content=”Vskills” />

</head>

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