HTML5 Meta Data
Metadata is often described as data about data. In HTML5, they are elements that are often used to provide information about the document itself.
In the past they were used by all search engines to rank pages but since 2009 Google stopped relying solely on Metadata and now use more information on pages and other data to manage page rankings. However, although metadata is not relied upon to rank pages by search engines, it can be used to display search engine results, and that this is really important.
Meta tags are defined by changing the name attribute to a valid value. The most commonly used meta tag is the one used for descriptions:
<meta name=”description” content=”A description of this HTML page”>
Without a description meta tag (or indeed with an empty one) search engines will generate a description from the actual page content.
Changing the name attribute of a Meta Tag changes its type. Here’s an example of a Meta Tag that sets the Author of the page:
<meta name=”author” content=”Andrew Tully”>
The list of Meta Tag types is very, very long. You must choose what is relevant and adds real value to your page. Refer to the W3C specs for complete lists. There are lots of other useful resources out there, for example:
- http://www.seoconsultants.com/meta-tags/dublin/
- https://www.w3.org/wiki/HTML/Elements/meta
- http://www.metatags.org/
In addition to setting Data, Meta Tags can also be used to perform the tasks of HTTP headers like redirect and refresh:
<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”5;url=http://www.google.com/”>
The value of the content attribute refers to the time interval in seconds before the refresh is performed, after which the page is redirected to the URL. Leave this blank to just refresh the page.