Meta Information
Provide metadata like character set, viewport, and description.
Syntax
<meta name="description" content="Free tutorials">The <meta> element provides metadata about the HTML document. Metadata is data about data — it is not displayed but is used by browsers and search engines.
Common meta tags
<meta charset="UTF-8">— sets the character encoding.<meta name="viewport">— controls responsive layout on mobile.<meta name="description">— a summary for search engines.
Example
Loading editor…
Press Run to see the result.
When to use it
- An SEO team adds <meta name="description"> to every page to control the text shown in Google search results.
- A developer adds <meta name="viewport"> to ensure the site scales correctly on mobile devices.
- A security engineer adds <meta http-equiv="Content-Security-Policy"> to restrict which scripts the page can load.
More examples
Charset and viewport meta tags
charset sets the character encoding; viewport makes the layout responsive on mobile screens.
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
</head>SEO description and author meta
These meta tags provide search engines with a description, author, and topic keywords for the page.
<head>
<meta name="description" content="Learn HTML from scratch with interactive examples.">
<meta name="author" content="SoundsCode Team">
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, tutorial, web development">
</head>Robots and refresh meta tags
robots controls search-engine crawling; http-equiv refresh redirects users to a new URL after a delay.
<head>
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
<!-- Redirect to new URL after 5 seconds -->
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5; url=https://example.com/new-page">
</head>
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