Web Development
Beginner
What is Meta Tags?
HTML elements in the page head that provide metadata about the document for browsers, search engines, and social media platforms.
Essential meta tags include charset (character encoding), viewport (responsive design), description (search result snippet), robots (crawling directives), and canonical (preferred URL). Open Graph tags (og:title, og:image) control social media previews. Twitter Cards provide Twitter-specific previews.
Meta tags are crucial for SEO and social sharing. The title tag (technically not a meta tag) is the most important on-page SEO element. Description meta tags influence click-through rates in search results. Proper viewport meta tag is required for mobile-responsive design.
