Meta Tag Generator

Fewer than you'd think. Meta tags are short bits of HTML in the head of a page that describe it to browsers, search engines, and social networks. Dozens exist, but only a handful change anything:

• Title tag: the blue headline in search results and the text on the browser tab. It's the single most important on-page element, and one of the few meta elements that directly affects rankings.
• Meta description: the grey text under the title. It doesn't affect rankings, but it decides whether people click.
• Robots: tells search engines whether to index the page and follow its links. Most pages don't need it, but it's the right way to keep thank-you pages, internal search results, and thin tag archives out of Google.
• Canonical: points to the main version of a page when the same content is reachable at more than one URL, such as with tracking parameters or a trailing slash.
• Viewport and charset: technical tags that make the page render properly on phones and display special characters correctly. Without the viewport tag, Google treats the page as not mobile-friendly.
• Open Graph and Twitter cards: control the image, title, and description that appear when the page is shared.

That's the set this tool generates. Tags like meta keywords, revisit-after, distribution, and rating are left out on purpose because no major search engine reads them anymore. If you're not sure what a page already has, paste its source into the Meta Tag Extractor and it will list every tag it finds.

Aim for a title of 50 to 60 characters and a description of 120 to 160. Those are rules of thumb, not hard limits. Google cuts titles by width, not by character count, which is why the counter above the title field shows pixels as well as characters. Anything beyond about 580 pixels on desktop gets trimmed with an ellipsis, and a title full of wide letters like W and M runs out of room sooner than one full of narrow letters like i and l.

Descriptions get around 155 to 160 characters on desktop and a little less on mobile. Going slightly over isn't a disaster, because Google only trims the end. Just make sure the first sentence can stand on its own if the rest disappears.

If you put your brand name at the end of every title, count it toward the limit. Google often adds the site name to results on its own now, so a title without the brand tacked on can sometimes show more of what you actually wrote.

Because Google treats your meta description as a suggestion. When it decides a passage from the page itself answers the searcher's query better, it shows that passage instead, and this happens to most descriptions at least some of the time. Google rewrites titles too, usually when they're too long, stuffed with keywords, or identical across many pages.

You can't force Google to use your text, but you can make it more likely. Write a description that genuinely summarizes the page, includes the main phrase people search for, and stays within the length limits. Give every page a different one. A title that's only your brand name, or a description copied from the first paragraph, gets replaced far more often than one written for the search. If Google still swaps it out, it's generally because the swap serves that particular search better, and that's usually fine for your click-through rate.

It depends on how your site is built:

• WordPress with an SEO plugin: don't paste the whole block. Rank Math, Yoast, SEOPress, and All in One SEO already output these tags, and adding a second copy creates duplicates. Instead, copy your title and description into the plugin's fields below the post editor, and set the share image in its Social tab.
• WordPress without a plugin: install one. Editing header.php by hand gives every page the same tags, which is worse than none.
• Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, Webflow: each has SEO fields per page for the title and description, and a social image setting. Use those. For anything they don't support, these platforms offer a per-page custom code or "code injection" box for the head section.
• Static HTML or a custom site: paste the block inside the <head> element, ideally near the top. The charset tag should be within the first 1,024 bytes of the file, so keep it first.

Whichever route you take, every page needs its own title, description, and canonical URL. Site-wide tags are fine for the viewport, charset, and site name.

No. Google stopped reading the keywords tag in 2009, and Bing has said it ignores it too, apart from treating a stuffed one as a possible spam signal. The option is still here because a few niche search engines and some internal site-search tools read it, and some clients ask for it. If you don't have a specific reason to add it, leave it off. It only hands your competitors a tidy list of the terms you're targeting. If a client insists on it, keep it to five or six phrases that genuinely appear on the page.

Mostly you need Open Graph. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram, and iMessage all read Open Graph tags to build their link previews, and X falls back to them when no Twitter card tags are present. So a page with only Open Graph tags still shares fine almost everywhere.

The Twitter tags are worth adding for two reasons. The twitter:card tag chooses between a large image card and a small square one, which Open Graph can't do, and twitter:site attributes the card to your account. That's why the tool generates a minimal Twitter set alongside the full Open Graph set, instead of repeating every tag twice. If you want to change what's shown, keep the two sets consistent so the preview looks the same no matter where the link lands.

Nothing leaves your browser. The tags, previews, and checks are all generated by JavaScript on this page, and there's no account, server, or database involved. The only thing stored is a copy of your entries in your own browser's local storage, so your work is still there if you refresh or come back later. "Clear everything" wipes it, and so does clearing your browser data. The share image preview works the same way: your browser loads the picture straight from the URL you typed, exactly as it would if you opened that image yourself.