What are meta tags?
Meta tags are HTML elements that provide metadata about a webpage to search engines and social platforms. They don't appear visually on the page but significantly impact how your page appears in search results and when shared on social media.
The 3 types of meta tags you need
1. SEO meta tags
These tell search engines about your page:
<title>— The clickable headline in Google search results<meta name="description">— The grey preview text below the title<link rel="canonical">— Prevents duplicate content issues<meta name="robots">— Tells crawlers whether to index the page
2. Open Graph tags (Facebook, LinkedIn)
Open Graph tags control how your page appears when shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, and most other social platforms:
og:title— Title shown on the shared cardog:description— Description shown on the cardog:image— The preview image (recommended: 1200×630px)og:type— Content type (website, article, product)
3. Twitter Card tags
Similar to Open Graph but specific to Twitter/X:
twitter:card— Card type (summary or summary_large_image)twitter:title— Title for the cardtwitter:image— Preview image
Meta tag best practices 2025
Title tag rules
- Keep between 50–60 characters
- Include your primary keyword near the beginning
- Make it compelling — this is your headline in search results
- Every page should have a unique title
Meta description rules
- Keep between 120–160 characters
- Include a call to action ("Learn how...", "Download free...")
- Include your primary keyword naturally
- Unique for every page — never duplicate
How to generate meta tags for free
- Go to Meta Tag Generator
- Fill in your page title and description
- Add canonical URL
- Expand Open Graph section and add OG image URL
- Copy the generated HTML
- Paste inside the
<head>section of your HTML
Validate your meta tags
After adding meta tags, test them with:
- Google Search Console (how Google sees your page)
- OG Image Preview (how your page looks when shared)
- Facebook Sharing Debugger (facebook.com/sharing/debugger)
What Google actually does with your description
Meta descriptions are not a ranking factor, and have not been for many years. They influence click-through rate, which matters, but not position.
More importantly, Google rewrites them. Studies consistently find the search engine substituting its own snippet — often pulled from body text that better matches the query — for a majority of results. A description written for one keyword will frequently be replaced when the page surfaces for a different one.
The practical implication: write a description that reads well for your most important query, and accept that Google will sometimes choose differently. Do not agonise over hitting an exact character count.
Length limits are pixels, not characters
The commonly cited 60-character title and 155-character description limits are approximations of a pixel width. Google truncates based on rendered width, so a title in wide characters truncates earlier than one in narrow characters.
WWWWWWWWWW and iiiiiiiiii are both ten characters and occupy very different space. Titles heavy in capitals and wide letters get cut sooner.
Two consequences: front-load the important words so truncation costs less, and treat character counts as a guide rather than a rule. Mobile and desktop also truncate at different points.
Tags that no longer do anything
Several meta tags persist in templates and tutorials long after ceasing to matter:
| Tag | Status |
|---|---|
<meta name="keywords"> |
Ignored by Google since 2009 |
<meta name="revisit-after"> |
Never supported by any major engine |
<meta name="author"> |
No SEO effect |
<meta name="generator"> |
Informational only |
<meta name="rating"> |
Largely obsolete |
Keywords deserve special mention because it is still widely copied. Beyond being ignored, it publishes your target keyword list to competitors, who can read it in your page source.
Tags that still matter
<title>— the strongest on-page signal, and the clickable headline in results.<meta name="description">— drives click-through.<link rel="canonical">— resolves duplicate content. High impact and easy to get wrong.<meta name="robots">— controls indexing. Also easy to get catastrophically wrong.<meta name="viewport">— required for mobile rendering, and mobile-first indexing means this affects everything.- Open Graph and Twitter Card tags — social previews.
The noindex accident
The single most damaging meta tag mistake is shipping <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> to production. It usually happens when a staging configuration is deployed unchanged, and it removes the site from search results entirely.
Recovery takes weeks after the tag is removed, because pages must be recrawled and reindexed. Check it on every deploy:
curl -s https://yoursite.com | grep -i 'name="robots"'
Verify against the raw HTML rather than DevTools, since a client-rendered tag can differ from what a crawler sees.
Frequently asked questions
Should every page have a unique title and description?
Yes. Duplicates across pages are a common technical SEO finding and make it harder for search engines to distinguish pages. Templated generation from page data is fine, as long as the output differs.
What if I leave the description blank?
Google generates a snippet from page content. That is sometimes better than a poor description, but you lose control of the message.
Do meta tags work on single-page apps?
Only if server-rendered. Crawlers reading raw HTML will not see tags injected by JavaScript after load, so client-only apps often show the same tags for every route.
How many characters should a title be?
Aim for 50–60, with the distinguishing words first. Longer titles are not penalised; they are simply truncated in display.
Where do these tags go?
Inside <head>. Tags placed in <body> are ignored.