🤯 HEAD

A simple guide to HTML <head> elements

Recommended Minimum

Below are the essential elements for any web document (websites/apps):

<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<!--
  The above 2 meta tags should come as early as possible in the <head>
  to consistently ensure proper document rendering.
  Any other head element should come *after* these tags.
-->
<title>Page Title</title>

meta charset - defines the encoding of the website, utf-8 is the standard

meta name="viewport" - viewport settings related to mobile responsiveness

width=device-width - use the physical width of the device (great for mobile!)

initial-scale=1 - the initial zoom, 1 means no zoom

Elements

Valid <head> elements include meta, link, title, style, script, noscript, and base.

These elements provide information for how a document should be perceived, and rendered, by web technologies. e.g. browsers, search engines, bots, etc.

<!--
  Set the character encoding for this document, so that
  all characters within the UTF-8 space (such as emoji)
  are rendered correctly.
-->
<meta charset="utf-8">

<!-- Set the document's title -->
<title>Page Title</title>

<!-- Set the base URL for all relative URLs within the document -->
<base href="https://example.com/page.html">

<!-- Link to an external CSS file -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">

<!-- Used for adding in-document CSS -->
<style>
  /* ... */
</style>

<!-- JavaScript & No-JavaScript tags -->
<script src="script.js"></script>
<script>
  // function(s) go here
</script>
<noscript>
  <!-- No JS alternative -->
</noscript>

Recommended Order

The following is the recommended order of elements in the <head> for best performance and correct document rendering:

<meta charset> — Character encoding declaration; must appear within the first 1024 bytes of the document
<meta name="viewport"> — Viewport settings; declare early to ensure correct responsive rendering
<title> — Document title; placed after encoding/viewport to prevent potential re-rendering
Other <meta> tags (description, robots, etc.)
Open Graph / Social meta tags
<link rel="canonical"> and other <link> tags (excluding stylesheets and resource hints)
<link rel="preconnect"> / <link rel="dns-prefetch"> — Resource hints; early to maximize their value
<link rel="stylesheet"> — External CSS; stylesheets should come before scripts
<link rel="icon"> — Favicons
<script> — Scripts; use defer or async where possible to avoid blocking rendering

<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

  <title>Page Title</title>

  <meta name="description" content="Page description">
  <!-- other meta tags -->

  <!-- Open Graph / Social meta tags -->
  <meta property="og:title" content="Page Title">
  <!-- other social meta tags -->

  <link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/page.html">
  <!-- other link tags (excluding stylesheets and resource hints) -->

  <link rel="preconnect" href="https://example.com">
  <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://example.com">

  <link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">

  <link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico">

  <script defer src="script.js"></script>
</head>

Link

<!-- Points to an external stylesheet -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://example.com/styles.css">

<!-- Helps prevent duplicate content issues -->
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/article/?page=2">

<!-- Links to a JSON file that specifies "installation" credentials for the web applications -->
<link rel="manifest" href="manifest.json">

<!-- Links to information about the author(s) of the document -->
<link rel="author" href="humans.txt">

<!-- Refers to a copyright statement that applies to the link's context -->
<link rel="license" href="copyright.html">

<!-- Gives a reference to a location in your document that may be in another language -->
<link rel="alternate" href="https://es.example.com/" hreflang="es">

<!-- Provides information about an author or another person
     Used for RelMeAuth, a distributed form of identity verification.
     See https://microformats.org/wiki/RelMeAuth to learn more -->
<link rel="me" href="https://google.com/profiles/thenextweb" type="text/html">
<link rel="me" href="mailto:name@example.com">
<link rel="me" href="sms:+15035550125">

<!-- Provides a self reference - useful when the document has multiple possible references -->
<link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://example.com/atom.xml">

<!-- The previous, and next documents in a series of documents, respectively -->
<link rel="prev" href="https://example.com/article/?page=1">
<link rel="next" href="https://example.com/article/?page=3">

<!-- Notifies a URL when you link to it on your document
     More information at https://webmention.net -->
<link rel="webmention" href="https://example.com/webmention">

<!-- Enables posting to your own domain using a Micropub client 
     More information at https://indieweb.org/Micropub -->
<link rel="micropub" href="https://example.com/micropub">

<!-- Enables you to use your site with IndieAuth, an identity solution that
     lets you authenticate with your domain name.
     Read more at https://indieauth.net. -->
<link rel="token_endpoint" href="https://example.com/token">
<link rel="authorization_endpoint" href="https://example.com/auth">

<!-- Open Search -->
<link rel="search" href="/open-search.xml" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" title="Search Title">

<!-- Feeds -->
<link rel="alternate" href="https://feeds.feedburner.com/example" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS">
<link rel="alternate" href="https://example.com/feed.atom" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom 0.3">

<!-- Prefetching, preloading, prebrowsing -->
<!-- More info: https://css-tricks.com/prefetching-preloading-prebrowsing/ -->
<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//example.com/">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://www.example.com/">
<link rel="prefetch" href="https://www.example.com/">

<link rel="preload" href="image.png" as="image">

📖 Link Relations

Scripts

<!--
  Scripts: place <script> tags at the end of <body> when possible.
  The following attributes control loading behavior when placed in <head>:
-->

<!-- Blocks HTML parsing and content rendering until the script is fetched and executed -->
<script src="script.js"></script>

<!-- The script will be fetched in parallel with parsing and executed as soon as it is available (before parsing completes) -->
<script async src="script.js"></script>

<!-- The script will be fetched in parallel with parsing and executed when the page has finished parsing -->
<script defer src="script.js"></script>

<!-- async takes precedence in modern browsers; defer acts as a fallback for older browsers that don't support async -->
<script async defer src="script.js"></script>

<!-- Inline script -->
<script>
  // function(s) go here
</script>

<!-- Subresource Integrity (SRI): use the integrity attribute to verify that the fetched resource has been delivered without unexpected manipulation -->
<script src="https://example.com/script.js" integrity="sha384-oqVuAfXRKap7fdgcCY5uykM6+R9GqQ8K/uxy9rx7HNQlGYl1kPzQho1wx4JwY8wC"></script>

📖 async vs defer attributes
📖 Subresource Integrity

Icons

<!-- For IE 10 and below -->
<!-- Place favicon.ico in the root directory - no tag necessary -->

<!-- Icon in the highest resolution we need it for -->
<link rel="icon" sizes="192x192" href="/path/to/icon.png">

<!-- Apple Touch Icon (reuse 192px icon.png) -->
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/path/to/apple-touch-icon.png">

Social

Open Graph

The Open Graph protocol is the de facto standard for controlling how your content appears when shared on social platforms. Originally created by Facebook, it's now consumed by most major platforms — including LinkedIn, X (as a fallback when Twitter Card tags are absent), Discord, Slack, iMessage, Mastodon, Bluesky, and WhatsApp.

<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/page.html">
<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta property="og:title" content="Content Title">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/image.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:alt" content="A description of what is in the image (not a caption)">
<meta property="og:description" content="Description Here">
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Site Name">
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_US">
<meta property="article:author" content="">

📖 Open Graph protocol
🛠 Test your page with the Facebook Sharing Debugger or the LinkedIn Post Inspector

Schema.org

<html lang="" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Article">
    <head>
      <link rel="author" href="">
      <link rel="publisher" href="">
      <meta itemprop="name" content="Content Title">
      <meta itemprop="description" content="Content description less than 200 characters">
      <meta itemprop="image" content="https://example.com/image.jpg">

Note: These meta tags require the itemscope and itemtype attributes to be added to the <html> tag.

📖 Getting Started - schema.org
🛠 Test your page with the Rich Results Test

Google JSON-LD Schema

The following is used by Google to help provide your site with a knowledge graph result when someone Googles you (this is the pane to the right of the search results that typically appears for larger brands):

<script type="application/ld+json">
  {
    "@context": "http://schema.org",
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "yourbrand.com",
    "url": "https://www.yourbrand.com/",
    "logo": "https://www.yourbrand.com/logo.png",
    "sameAs": [
      "https://www.facebook.com/yourbrand",
      "https://twitter.com/yourbrand",
      "https://uk.pinterest.com/yourbrand/",
      "https://www.instagram.com/yourbrand/",
      "https://www.linkedin.com/company/yourbrand-com"
    ]
  }
</script>

Pinterest

Pinterest lets you prevent people from saving things from your website, according to their help center. The description is optional.

<meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" description="Sorry, you can't save from my website!">

OEmbed

<link rel="alternate" type="application/json+oembed"
  href="https://example.com/services/oembed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Ffoo%2F&amp;format=json"
  title="oEmbed Profile: JSON">
<link rel="alternate" type="text/xml+oembed"
  href="https://example.com/services/oembed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Ffoo%2F&amp;format=xml"
  title="oEmbed Profile: XML">

📖 oEmbed format

QQ/Wechat

Users share web pages to qq wechat will have a formatted message

<meta itemprop="name" content="share title">
<meta itemprop="image" content="http://imgcache.qq.com/qqshow/ac/v4/global/logo.png">
<meta name="description" itemprop="description" content="share content">

📖 Code Format Docs

Dublin Core

Dublin Core is a metadata vocabulary standardized as ISO 15836 and maintained by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI). It defines fifteen core elements for describing resources and is widely used in digital libraries, institutional repositories, academic publishing, and government portals. To use Dublin Core in HTML, declare the DC namespace and then add the desired elements as <meta> tags with a DC. prefix.

<!-- Declare the Dublin Core namespace -->
<link rel="schema.DC" href="https://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">

<meta name="DC.title" content="Page Title">
<meta name="DC.creator" content="Author Name">
<meta name="DC.subject" content="Keywords; Topics">
<meta name="DC.description" content="A brief description of the page content">
<meta name="DC.publisher" content="Publisher Name">
<meta name="DC.contributor" content="Contributor Name">
<meta name="DC.date" content="YYYY-MM-DD">
<meta name="DC.type" content="Text">
<meta name="DC.format" content="text/html">
<meta name="DC.identifier" content="https://example.com/page.html">
<meta name="DC.source" content="https://example.com/original-source">
<meta name="DC.language" content="en">
<meta name="DC.relation" content="https://example.com/related">
<meta name="DC.coverage" content="Spatial or temporal coverage">
<meta name="DC.rights" content="Copyright Owner Name">

📖 Dublin Core Metadata Element Set
📖 Using Dublin Core in HTML

Fediverse

Some Fediverse software such as Mastodon allow you to put your Fediverse handle in a meta tag which will show up in embeds to your website. In addition to the tag you will also need to add your domain to the list of allowed websites in "Settings -> Public profile -> Verification -> Author attribution" (for Mastodon).

<meta name="fediverse:creator" content="@handle@example.org">

Browsers / Platforms

Apple iOS

<!-- Smart App Banner -->
<meta name="apple-itunes-app" content="app-id=APP_ID,affiliate-data=AFFILIATE_ID,app-argument=SOME_TEXT">

<!-- Disable automatic detection and formatting of possible phone numbers -->
<meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no">

<!-- Launch Icon (180x180px or larger) -->
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/path/to/apple-touch-icon.png">

<!-- Launch Screen Image -->
<link rel="apple-touch-startup-image" href="/path/to/launch.png">

<!-- Launch Icon Title -->
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-title" content="App Title">

<!-- Enable standalone (full-screen) mode -->
<meta name="mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes">

<!-- Status bar appearance (has no effect unless standalone mode is enabled) -->
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black">

<!-- Viewport fit for notched phones (iPhone X and later); add viewport-fit=cover to your existing viewport meta tag -->
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, viewport-fit=cover">

<!-- iOS app deep linking -->
<meta name="apple-itunes-app" content="app-id=APP-ID, app-argument=http/url-sample.com">
<link rel="alternate" href="ios-app://APP-ID/http/url-sample.com">

📖 Configuring Web Applications

Google Android

<meta name="theme-color" content="#E64545">

<!-- Add to home screen -->
<meta name="mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes">
<!-- More info: https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/installtohomescreen -->

<!-- Android app deep linking -->
<meta name="google-play-app" content="app-id=package-name">
<link rel="alternate" href="android-app://package-name/http/url-sample.com">

Google Chrome

<link rel="chrome-webstore-item" href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/APP_ID">

<!-- Disable translation prompt -->
<meta name="google" content="notranslate">

Browsers (Chinese)

360 Browser

<!-- Select rendering engine order -->
<meta name="renderer" content="webkit|ie-comp|ie-stand">

QQ Mobile Browser

<!-- Locks the screen into the specified orientation -->
<meta name="x5-orientation" content="landscape/portrait">

<!-- Display this document in fullscreen -->
<meta name="x5-fullscreen" content="true">

<!-- Document will be displayed in "application mode" (fullscreen, etc.) -->
<meta name="x5-page-mode" content="app">

UC Mobile Browser

<!-- Locks the screen into the specified orientation -->
<meta name="screen-orientation" content="landscape/portrait">

<!-- Display this document in fullscreen -->
<meta name="full-screen" content="yes">

<!-- UC browser will display images even if in "text mode" -->
<meta name="imagemode" content="force">

<!-- Document will be displayed in "application mode"(fullscreen, forbidding gesture, etc.) -->
<meta name="browsermode" content="application">

<!-- Disabled the UC browser's "night mode" for this document -->
<meta name="nightmode" content="disable">

<!-- Simplify the document to reduce data transfer -->
<meta name="layoutmode" content="fitscreen">

<!-- Disable the UC browser's feature of "scaling font up when there are many words in this document" -->
<meta name="wap-font-scale" content="no">

📖 UC Browser Docs

App Links

<!-- iOS -->
<meta property="al:ios:url" content="applinks://docs">
<meta property="al:ios:app_store_id" content="12345">
<meta property="al:ios:app_name" content="App Links">

<!-- Android -->
<meta property="al:android:url" content="applinks://docs">
<meta property="al:android:app_name" content="App Links">
<meta property="al:android:package" content="org.applinks">

<!-- Web fall back -->
<meta property="al:web:url" content="https://applinks.org/documentation">

📖 App Links

Deprecated

For tags and elements that were once part of this guide but are no longer supported (Internet Explorer compatibility, Safari Pinned Tabs, Alexa verification, etc.), see DEPRECATED.md.

Other Resources

Related Projects

Atom HTML Head Snippets - Atom package for HEAD snippets
Sublime Text HTML Head Snippets - Sublime Text package for HEAD snippets
head-it - CLI interface for HEAD snippets
vue-head - Manipulating the meta information of the HEAD tag for Vue.js

Other Formats

📄 PDF

🌐 Translations

🤝 Contributing

Open an issue or a pull request to suggest changes or additions.

Guide

The HEAD repository consists of two branches:

1. `master`

This branch consists of the README.md file that is reflected on the htmlhead.dev website. All changes to the content of the guide should be made in this file.

Please follow these steps for pull requests:

{:.list-style-default}

Modify only one tag, or one related set of tags at a time
Use double quotes on attributes
Don't include a trailing slash in self-closing elements — the HTML5 spec says they're optional
Consider including a link to documentation that supports your change

2. `gh-pages`

This branch is responsible for the htmlhead.dev website. We use Jekyll to deploy the README.md markdown file to GitHub Pages. All website related modifications should be made in this branch.

You may find it helpful to review the Jekyll Docs and understand how Jekyll works before working in this branch.

🌟 Contributors

Check out all the super awesome contributors 🤩

👤 Author

Josh Buchea

GitHub: @joshbuchea
Mastodon: @joshbuchea@hachyderm.io

💛 Support

If this project was helpful for you or your organization, please considering supporting my work directly:

Everything helps, thanks! 🙏

— Josh

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 421 Commits
.github		.github
.prettierignore		.prettierignore
DEPRECATED.md		DEPRECATED.md
README.md		README.md

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🤯 HEAD

Table of Contents

Recommended Minimum

Elements

Recommended Order

Meta

Link

Scripts

Icons

Social

Open Graph

Schema.org

Google JSON-LD Schema

Pinterest

OEmbed

QQ/Wechat

Dublin Core

Fediverse

Browsers / Platforms

Apple iOS

Google Android

Google Chrome

Browsers (Chinese)

360 Browser

QQ Mobile Browser

UC Mobile Browser

App Links

Deprecated

Other Resources

Related Projects

Other Formats

🌐 Translations

🤝 Contributing

Guide

1. master

2. gh-pages

🌟 Contributors

👤 Author

💛 Support

📝 License

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1. `master`

2. `gh-pages`

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