The meta tags that matter for SEO
- Title (
<title>): the clickable headline in Google. Aim for about 50–60 characters, with the main keyword near the start. - Meta description: the grey text under the headline. About 140–160 characters that tell searchers why to click. Google sometimes writes its own, but a good one is used often.
- Canonical link: tells search engines the main address of a page that can be reached by several URLs.
- Robots:
noindexkeeps a page out of search results, for example thank-you or test pages.
Open Graph and X (Twitter) cards
When someone shares your link on Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn or X, these tags choose the title, description and image in the preview. A share image of 1200 × 630 pixels works on all of them. Without these tags, apps guess, often badly.
Writing titles that get clicks
- Match what people search: “Merge PDF – Combine PDF Files Online Free” beats “PDF Tool 1”.
- Give every page a different title and description.
- Put your brand at the end, not the start.
Where to put the tags
Paste them inside the <head> of the page. In WordPress, an SEO plugin usually manages them for you. After publishing, test the preview with the sharing debuggers from Facebook and LinkedIn.
Also create a robots.txt and an XML sitemap so search engines can find all your pages.