Meta Tags (Metadata) – Definition & Explanation
Meta tags, also called metadata, pass information on to search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) and robots.
Meta tags, also called metadata, pass information on to search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) and robots. They are stored in the head (header) of an HTML document. In most cases they are not visible to the user.
Metadata dates back to the early days of the internet and search engines, when important information about websites and content still had to be provided to them.
Even today, many search engines use meta tags on websites in order to understand them better. Some meta tags are therefore still relevant in the search engine optimization of websites.
Structure and example of a meta tag
Meta tags are loaded in the <head> area of an HTML page. A meta tag can be used, for example, to control the search engine bots (robots) that go through the website. In the head area, this then looks like this:
<head>
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
</head>
The “robots” command is aimed directly at the crawlers that want to go through the website. With the command “content=index,” the search engines are instructed to include the content of the website in their index for the search results.
Note: The previously common directives noodp and noydir are non-functional and no longer belong in the example — they referred to the Open Directory Project (DMOZ), shut down in 2017, and the Yahoo Directory, shut down in 2014; Google has ignored noodp since 2017.
A complete, modern <head> example to copy looks like this:
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>Page title | Brand</title>
<meta name="description" content="Short, meaningful page description.">
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/seite/">
<meta property="og:title" content="Page title">
<meta property="og:description" content="Description for social previews">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://www.example.com/bild.jpg">
</head>
The importance of meta tags for SEO
Since search engines still follow some meta tags, these are also relevant for SEO. Webmasters should therefore set the meta tags of their website correctly. There are a large number of meta tags — some are SEO-relevant, others have no significance for the search engines.
SEO-relevant meta tags
- Title: The HTML heading of the document (title tag or meta title) is a direct ranking factor.
- Description: The meta description is not directly SEO-relevant, but as an attention-grabbing snippet it increases the click-through rate and indirectly improves the ranking.
- Robots: controls indexing. Without an implementation, Google indexes everything and follows all links. If a page is not to be indexed (e.g. to avoid duplicate content), you use <meta name=“robots“ content=“noindex,follow“>.
- Canonical: tells search engines which URL is the master copy, thus avoiding duplicate content problems. Technically, the canonical tag is not a <meta> tag but a <link> element: <link rel=“canonical“ href=“…“> – do not implement it as <meta>.
The technically most important meta tag in practice is the character encoding (<meta charset=“utf-8″>). It declares the document's character encoding (nowadays UTF-8 throughout) and ensures that umlauts and special characters (ä, ö, ü, ß, euro) are displayed correctly instead of as broken characters. The tag should be placed right at the beginning of the <head>, ideally within the first 1024 bytes.
As guideline values, roughly 55–60 characters apply for the title (about 580 px display width on the desktop) and roughly 150–160 characters for the meta description. Google calculates by pixel width, so the exact character count varies. Important statements belong at the front so that they remain visible when truncated.
Technically important meta tags
- Viewport: is aimed at the browser of the end device (mobile display), not at search engines. SEO relevance arises only indirectly through mobile-friendliness — for which Google pays particular attention to mobile-optimized pages.
- Content Type / charset: does not declare “types of content such as images or videos,” but the MIME type and above all the character encoding of the document — nowadays via <meta charset=“utf-8″>.
- Language: specifies the language, but is not SEO-relevant — language assignment is handled via hreflang.
- Keywords: Google has officially ignored the meta keywords tag since September 2009, and Bing does not use it either — so for the relevant search engines it is generally not a signal.
- Revisit (revisit-after): is not an official standard and is not evaluated by Google to control the crawl frequency — effectively ineffective and outdated.
- Author, Publisher, Copyright, Page topic, Page type, Audience: name the author, publisher, copyrights, category, page type, or target audience — without SEO relevance.
Open Graph and Twitter/X Card tags (social meta tags) control how a page appears as a preview card when shared on social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, X). Via Open Graph, the title, description, and preview image are set: og:title, og:description, and og:image (recommended 1200×630 px). X additionally uses twitter:card (e.g. “summary_large_image”). Without these tags, the network pulls some arbitrary text and a random image — with them, you deliberately control the sharing preview.
FAQ: Summary of frequently asked questions about meta tags
Which meta tags are there?
There are a large number of different meta tags, such as
- Title,
- Description,
- Robots,
- Canonical tag,
- Viewport,
- Content Type,
- Language,
- Author,
- Keywords,
- Open Graph
Are meta tags relevant for the search engines?
Yes, some are relevant for the search engines, and the crawlers follow their instructions.
Which meta tags are SEO-relevant?
A few meta tags are still SEO-relevant, such as the title tag and the meta description. The robots directive is also important for SEO.
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