What is content type?
More accurately written as Content-Type and also known as media type, content type is a header that defines the classification of a piece of content or media on a website.
If you want more information on this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: What are the different content type values I can use?
The different content type values you can use are as follows:
- Application
- Audio
- Example
- Image
- Message
- Model
- Multipart
- Text
- Video
Let us take a closer look at each one:
First, the application value represents any file that can either be used by applications or cannot be classified with a unique assignment.
Second, the audio value, as the name suggests, represents any type of audio file that is found within a document or file.
Third, the example value is used to denote documents or files that contain examples of particular file formats.
Fourth, the image value, as you may have guessed, represents all types of image, photo, and graphic files.
Fifth, the message value denotes message-type content such as email.
Sixth, the model value represents any data that has a multidimensional structure.
Seventh, the multipart value denotes any file or document that is made up of several different parts.
Eighth, the text value, represents all types of text files.
Finally, the video value denotes all types of video files.
Aside from these nine main categories, however, you can also further subcategorize your content, as in:
- Image/bmp (for bitmap image files)
- Image/tiff (for TIFF image files)
- Text/plain (for plain text files)
- Audio/x-wav (for wav files)
- Audio/mpeg (for MP3 files)
- Video/mpeg (for MPA, MP2, MPE, MPG, and MPEG files)
Question #2: What is content type used for?
Content type is used for describing the data in the body of a piece of code in enough detail that any receiving user agent is able to choose the appropriate mechanism or agent to either deliver said data to the user or handle it properly—which brings us to the next point:
Question #3: What are the benefits of using content type?
The biggest benefit of using content type is that it ensures that a particular page will be properly displayed across all browsers—even if it contains special characters and punctuation.
Without it, characters such as ü, ö, and ä, which are called umlauts, may not be displayed correctly by some browsers and be replaced by other placeholder characters, which not only looks bad, but may also cause the content of the page to be difficult or impossible to read and understand. The same goes for special punctuation.
Using content type fixes this (and other similar rendering issues) by allowing developers to define the types of content available on a page according to the ISO standard. This means that any browser accessing it would know exactly how to properly display it.
Question #4: Can I use content type as a meta tag?
Yes, you can use content type as a meta tag. Using it this way allows you to define the character set and type of content a particular HTML page uses.
Question #5: Does defining content type help with SEO?
Yes, content type helps with SEO because it allows you to provide search engine crawlers crucial information via your website’s meta tags, allowing them to accurately classify your content in advance.
But that is not all.
As we have seen earlier, content type also allows you to define the language and character set of a web page. This means that if, for example, you define a page as using the Western European character set, then Google would automatically know it should equate the umlauts ü, ö, and ä with ue, oe, and ae. So, when a user performs a search with your keywords but written with umlauts, Google would still consider your page as a relevant result.