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<meta />

By Jennifer Kyrnin, About.com

<meta /> Description:

The <meta /> element supplies additional information about a document.

<meta /> Web Browser Support:

<meta /> Attributes:

<meta /> End Tag:

None. <meta /> is a singleton tag.

<meta /> Contents:

None.

<meta /> Valid Context:

The <meta /> tag is valid within the following tags:
head

<meta /> Usage:

  • Define the description of the page for search engines.
    <meta name="description" content="This is the description of the Web page.">
  • Include keywords on which search engines will search.
    <meta name="keywords" content="keywords, separated, by commas, they can, be, words or phrases">
  • Define when the content on the page expires (a MIME header).
    <meta http-equiv="expires" content="thu, 16 DEC 1999 00:04:00 PST">
  • Force the current page to reload to a new page after 10 seconds.
    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10;url=new URL">

<meta /> Special Notes:

  • Use meta tags to make your web pages more accessible to search engines and web spiders. However, you should be careful to keep the keywords and description concise. Many search engines have "spamming" rules, allowing no more than a small amount of characters or keywords.

More <meta /> Information:

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