Configuring Document Metadata Within the HTML head Element
Jul 09, 2025 am 02:30 AMMetadata in HTML head is critical to SEO, social sharing, and browser behavior. 1. Set the page title and description, use
The HTML head part of the web page doesn't look big, but it contains a lot of key information, especially document metadata. Although these data are not displayed directly on the page, they have an important impact on SEO, social sharing, browser behavior, etc. Configuring these contents can make your website more professional and easier to discover.

The following aspects are what you should pay attention to when setting up HTML document metadata.

Set page title and description
<title></title>
and <meta name="description">
are the two most basic metadata tags.
- The page title will be displayed on the browser tab and is also the link text in the search engine results.
- Descriptions are often used in search result summary. Although they do not directly affect ranking, writing well can improve click-through rates.
<head> <title>Article title-Website name</title> <meta name="description" content="This is a brief description of the page, usually controlled within 150 words"> </head>
suggestion:

- The title is kept simple and powerful, and it is best to include keywords.
- The title and description of each page should be as unique as possible to avoid duplication.
- Don’t pile up keywords, it’s more important to express naturally.
Add Open Graph and Twitter card information
If you want your page to be shared better on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), or other social platforms, you can't ignore the settings of Open Graph and Twitter Cards.
These tags determine what titles, images, and descriptions users see when sharing your page.
<meta property="og:title" content="Title at Sharing"> <meta property="og:description" content="Description at sharing"> <meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/image.jpg"> <meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/page"> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
Note:
- The image size should be appropriate, Open Graph recommends using pictures with at least 1200x630 pixels.
- If you have multiple social media platforms, you can fine-tune the content based on the platform's features.
- Use tools such as Facebook Sharing Debugger or Twitter Card Validator to test the effect.
Define character set and viewport settings
These two seemingly inconspicuous tags are actually very important, especially affecting the mobile browsing experience.
<meta charset="UTF-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
-
charset
ensures that the web page displays characters in various languages ??correctly. -
viewport
tells mobile devices how to scale pages, which is the basis of responsive design.
FAQ:
- Forgot to set the viewport will cause the page to appear very small on your phone.
- Using outdated charsets (such as GBKs) can cause garbled code or compatibility issues.
Other practical optional tags
In addition to the main content mentioned above, there are also some optional metadata tags, which are also useful in specific scenarios:
Author and copyright information
<meta name="author" content="Zhang San"> <meta name="copyright" content="? 2024 Example.com">
This information is more used for internal management or document recording, and has little impact on the outside.
robots control search engine crawling behavior
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
It can be used to tell search engines whether to index the page, or whether to track links therein.
canonical tags prevent duplicate content issues
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/this-page">
This tag helps search engines identify "main versions" when the same content can be accessed through multiple URLs.
Basically that's it. The metadata configuration in HTML head is not complicated, but it is easily overlooked. Taking some time to handle these details can help you save a lot of follow-up trouble.
The above is the detailed content of Configuring Document Metadata Within the HTML head Element. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!

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