Coding: XHTML: Meta Tags
Meta tags are also placed in the head area and provide information about the page itself. There are many different kinds that can be included. No meta tags are required in an HTML document. They are optional. However they provide important information for developers, testers, and automated system that might read your source code.
Like the encoding declaration, the meta tag can be used to declare the document's character encoding. It's okay to have this information twice in your document as long as the charset statements match.
Example
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
Meta tags also provide important information about the author of the page, keywords related to the document, a description of the site, copyright information, and web page generator.
Examples
<meta name="author" content="Annette Lamb" />
<meta name="keywords" content="pet, dog, puppy, cat, kitten, fish" />
<meta name="description" content="Choosing a pet." />
<meta name="copyright" content="© 2004 Annette Lamb" />
If you want to use meta tags, but you're not sure what to include, try the META Tag Generator from AnyBrowser.com. Fill in the blanks and it will generate meta tags.
Your Document
Your document should now look something like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head>
<title>Annette Lamb's Personal Page</title>
<meta name="author" content="Annette Lamb" />
<meta name="keywords" content="pet, dog, puppy, cat, kitten, fish" />
<meta name="description" content="Choosing a pet." />
<meta name="copyright" content="© 2007 Annette Lamb" />
</head>
</html>
Learn More
meta tag from w3schools
Misc - Meta Tags from WEBalley
Metadata at W3C
META - Metadata from Web Design Group (basic tags)
W3C Recommendations for encoding in-document