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It’s hard to remember everything that should be included in the <head> of a HTML document. Old meta tags are sometimes phased out and new meta tags are sometimes introduced. The fact that nothing in the <head> element is actually shown to your site’s visitors—with the exception of the <title>—doesn’t help either.
As such, I’ve created a GitHub repository to track what I personally view as important inclusions in the <head> of a HTML document. Keep in mind that this is just a generic starting point and that you may need to add or remove tags depending on the project.
Do I even need the head element?
In HTML5 it’s actually okay to omit the <head> element; the following will validate:
<!doctype html> <title>Page Title</title>
With that being said, it is still best practice to include both the <head> and <body> tags in a HTML document:
<!doctype html>
<head>
<title>Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>