HTML Meta Tags
Complete reference for HTML meta tags and their SEO impact. Includes basic tags, Open Graph, Twitter Cards, canonical, hreflang, and HTTP headers — with copy-ready examples.
Basic
<title>The HTML title element defines the page title shown in browser tabs, bookmarks, and search…SEO: critical<head>→meta descriptionA 150–160 character summary of the page that may appear as the snippet under the title in …SEO: high<head>→meta robotsDirectives that control how search engines index the page and follow its links.SEO: critical<head>→meta viewportControls how a page scales and displays on mobile devices — required for mobile-friendly s…SEO: high<head>→meta charsetDeclares the character encoding of the HTML document — UTF-8 is the universal standard.SEO: medium<head>→meta authorSpecifies the author of the page or document — a weak E-E-A-T signal but rarely used by se…SEO: low<head>→meta theme-colorSets the colour of the browser chrome (address bar, tab bar) on mobile devices when the pa…SEO: low<head>→meta refreshInstructs the browser to reload the page or redirect to another URL after a specified numb…SEO: medium<head>→meta referrerControls how much referrer information the browser sends when users click links from your …SEO: low<head>→
Technical
link rel="canonical"Specifies the preferred URL for a page when duplicate or near-duplicate content exists at …SEO: critical<head>→link rel="alternate" hreflangTells search engines which language/region a page targets and links to equivalent pages in…SEO: high<head>→X-Robots-Tag (HTTP header)An HTTP response header that carries the same directives as meta robots, but works for non…SEO: criticalHTTP header→
Open Graph
og:titleThe title displayed when your page is shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, and other Open …SEO: high<head>→og:descriptionThe description shown in social share cards when your page is shared on Facebook, LinkedIn…SEO: high<head>→og:imageThe image displayed in social share cards — the most visually impactful Open Graph tag for…SEO: high<head>→og:urlThe canonical URL of the page for social sharing — used to aggregate share counts across U…SEO: medium<head>→og:typeDeclares the Open Graph object type — website, article, product, video, or music — which a…SEO: medium<head>→og:site_nameThe name of the overall website — displayed in social cards to identify the source site be…SEO: low<head>→og:localeDeclares the language and territory of the Open Graph object (e.g., en_US, fr_FR).SEO: low<head>→
Twitter Card
twitter:cardDefines the type of card displayed when your URL is shared on X (Twitter) — summary, summa…SEO: high<head>→twitter:titleThe title shown in X (Twitter) Card previews — falls back to og:title if not set.SEO: high<head>→twitter:descriptionThe description shown beneath the title in X (Twitter) Card previews — falls back to og:de…SEO: medium<head>→twitter:imageThe image displayed in X (Twitter) Card previews — falls back to og:image but should be se…SEO: high<head>→
Deprecated
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Audit title, description, OG tags, and canonical on any URL