What are the best practices for SEO meta tags?

Title tag:

This is the most important meta tag for SEO.

  • Keep it 50-60 characters (or 600 pixels) to avoid truncation in search results
  • Place important keywords near the beginning
  • Make each page's title unique and descriptive
  • Include your brand name (typically at the end)
  • Use separators like | or - between phrases
  • Avoid keyword stuffing and write naturally for humans first

Meta description:

  • Write compelling 150-160 characters (or 920 pixels) that accurately summarize the page
  • Include target keywords naturally but focus on encouraging clicks
  • Each page should have a unique description
  • Write in active voice with a clear value proposition or call-to-action
  • Avoid duplicating the title tag content

Meta robots:

  • Use <meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> to allow indexing (this is the default)
  • Use noindex to prevent indexing of low-value pages (admin pages, duplicate content, staging sites)
  • Use nofollow to prevent following links on the page
  • Use noarchive to prevent cached versions
  • Use nosnippet to prevent text snippets in search results
  • Combine values with commas: noindex,nofollow

Canonical tags:

Use <link rel="canonical" href="URL"> to specify the preferred version when multiple URLs show the same content:

  • Handling www vs non-www
  • HTTP vs HTTPS
  • URL parameters
  • Pagination

Best practices:

  • Always use absolute URLs
  • Self-reference canonicals (pointing to themselves) are a best practice to prevent accidental duplication

Viewport meta tag:

Essential for mobile SEO:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1">

Language tags:

For multi-language sites:

<html lang="en">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="URL">

Common mistakes to avoid:

  • Duplicate meta tags across pages
  • Missing or empty meta descriptions
  • Keyword-stuffed titles
  • Meta keywords tag (obsolete and ignored by Google)
  • Conflicting canonical tags

Tools like Google Search Console show how Google sees your meta tags and highlights issues.

Try our Meta Tag Extractor →

Related Questions