Meta information means “information about information.”

In HTML, meta tags describe the content of the document in which they’re written. Meta tags have two possible attributes:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="name" CONTENT="content">

and

<META NAME="name" CONTENT="content">

. Meta tags with an

HTTP-EQUIV

attribute are analogous to

HTTP

headers that can control the action of browsers. Meta tags with a

NAME

attribute are used primarily by indexing and searching tools. These tools can gather meta information in order to sort and classify web pages. One way to help your document show up more frequently in search engines and directories is to use the

META NAME

attribute to set keywords that will pull up your site when someone does a search for those words.