How to Create a Meta Tag in HTML

Meta tags in your HTML pages provide information not for normal visitors but for search engines, to help them better index your pages. The most often used types of meta tags specify keywords and descriptions.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Text or HTML editor

Create META tags

1. Enter one or more META tags within the section of your HTML file, following the general format below:
   

2. Specify keywords describing the concepts the page talks about using a META tag such as the one below, separating keywords by commas:
   

3. Specify a description for the page using a META tag such as the one below. The description may be used by some search engines in their search results page listings:
   

4. Specify the character set or MIME type of the web page using a META tag such as the one below. This may be necessary if the web server does not provide the correct information automatically:
   
   

5. Specify whether you want search engines ("robots") to index this page using a META tag such as the one below. This may be necessary if the web server does not provide this information:
   

6. Specify any other META data you wish, using an arbitrary value for the NAME attribute, auch as AUTHOR to specify the author of the page. However, such data will in general be ignored by both search engines and browsers, and be processed only by specialized applications.

Tips & Warnings

• Many web experts believe that meta keywords are no longer used by search engines to help index HTML pages.