SEO Meta Tags Explained: Title, Description and Open Graph

Meta tags are small pieces of information in a page's head. Visitors never see them on the page, but search engines and social networks use them to decide what to show when your link appears.

The title tag

The most important tag. It is the blue headline in search results and the text on the browser tab. Aim for about 50 to 60 characters, because longer titles get cut off with an ellipsis. Put the main idea first and make it unique for every page.

The meta description

The grey text below the title in search results. It doesn't directly raise your ranking, but a clear one gets more clicks. Keep it near 150 to 160 characters, describe what the visitor will get, and avoid copying it across pages. Google sometimes rewrites it, which is normal. Use the Character Counter to check the length.

Open Graph and Twitter tags

When someone shares your link, social sites read these tags to build the preview card:

• og:title and og:description set the card text.
• og:image sets the picture. An image about 1200 by 630 pixels works well.
• og:url is the page address.
• twitter:card set to summary_large_image shows the big picture layout.

Canonical and robots tags

• <link rel="canonical"> tells search engines the main address when the same page is reachable from several addresses.
• <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> asks search engines to keep a page out of results.

A clean address helps too

Short, readable page addresses are easier to share and understand. Turn a headline into one with the Slug Generator.

Generate them all

The Meta Tag Generator writes all of the tags above, shows how your page will look in Google and on social sites, and warns you when something is too long.