Meta tags are snippets of HTML that describe your page to search engines and social platforms. Some still matter enormously; others are museum pieces. Here is the 2026 edition of what is what.
The title tag: still the heavyweight
The <title> tag is the strongest on-page relevance signal you control
and the headline of your search result. Rules of thumb: under 60 characters, main keyword
near the front, unique on every page, and written to be clicked — not just crawled.
The meta description: your advert copy
Google says descriptions are not a direct ranking factor, but a compelling description lifts click-through rate — and clicks are what rankings are for. Aim for 140–155 characters, include the search term (it gets bolded in results), state your location if you serve a local area, and end with a call to action.
Robots meta: the traffic lights
noindex removes a page from search; nofollow tells Google not to
pass authority through its links. Useful for thank-you pages, internal search results and
staging sites — disastrous when left on your homepage by accident. Check it after every
redesign; it is the classic cause of a site “vanishing from Google overnight”.
Open Graph and Twitter cards
These control how your pages look when shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and X.
A page with a proper og:title, og:description and a 1200×630
og:image gets dramatically more clicks from social shares than a bare link.
They take minutes to add and every page on this site has them.
The keywords meta tag: officially dead
Google has ignored meta keywords since 2009. Keeping it does no harm, but
it does no good either — and stuffing it is a charming little time capsule of 2005 SEO.
Quick audit for your own site
- View source on your homepage — is the title tag unique and keyword-led?
- Does every important page have a hand-written description?
- Is anything accidentally set to
noindex? - Paste a link into WhatsApp — does a rich preview appear?
Meta tags sit within our broader on-page SEO basics framework, and they are checked on every SEO friendly website checklist audit we run.
