Whenever you start a new project you might forget about some standard tags and meta tags to use on a website you are building.
Here is the list of some of the SEO tags you should think about putting on your next project:
Meta Title Tag
The most important tag used as a title of the page. This tag explains what the page is about before users click on search result. It should contain 60 characters or less.
1 | <title>Example Title</title> |
Meta Description Tag
A 160 character snippet used to explain the content of the page. This should be present on every page.
1 | <meta name="description" content="This is an example of a meta description. This will often show up in search results."> |
Favicon
This will add an icon next to your title in your browser tab. This is not really important for SEO, but it does enhance the look of the title in Google search.
1 | <link rel="shortcut icon" href="https://example.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> |
Viewport Meta Tag
Viewport is not an SEO meta tag, but it does play a role in Google Search bots scanning your website. The tag gives the browser instructions on how to control the page’s dimensions and scaling. With Google moving to mobile-first indexing, you will need this tag to scale your website for the mobile devices.
1 | <meta name=viewport content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> |
Read more about viewport meta tag here:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Mobile/Viewport_meta_tag
Robots Meta Tag
Robots meta tag allows you to block search engines from indexing certain pages on your website.
1 | <meta name="robots" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW,NOARCHIVE"> |
Read more about robots meta tag here:
https://developers.google.com/search/reference/robots_meta_tag
Content Type Meta Tag
This meta tag specifies the character encoding for the document.
1 2 | <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> |
Read more about content type meta tag here:
https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_meta_http_equiv.asp
Facebook Sharing Tags
These meta tags will be used for showing information on Facebook when you share links to your website.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | <meta content="https://example.com" property="og:url" /> <meta property="og:title" content="Page Title" /> <meta property="og:description" content="Page Description" /> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Website Name" /> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> <meta property='og:image' content='https://example.com/image.jpg' /> <meta property="fb:app_id" content="9999999999999999" /> |
Read more about Facebook Open Graph tags here:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/
You can debug your Facebook sharing meta tags here:
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/
Twitter Cards
These meta tags will be used for showing information on Twitter when you share links to your website.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" /> <meta name="twitter:title" content="Page Title" /> <meta name="twitter:description" content="Page Description" /> <meta name="twitter:url" content="https://example.com/" /> <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@twitter_username"> <meta name="twitter:site" content="@twitter_username" /> <meta name="twitter:image" content="http://example.com/image.jpg"> |
Read more about Twitter cards here:
https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/optimize-with-cards/overview/summary-card-with-large-image
Organization Structured Data
Organization structured data informs search engines of basic information about your company.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 | <script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "Organization", "url" : "https://example.com/", "contactPoint" : [ { "@type" : "ContactPoint", "telephone" : "+1-866-555-5555", "contactType" : "customer service", "contactOption" : "TollFree" } ] } </script> |
You can find more information on organization structured data here:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data
Local Business Structured Data
Local Business is structured data used for explaining store hours, address, social media accounts, logo and etc. You will need to put this on one page only – homepage or about page should be enough.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 | <script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "LocalBusiness", "url":"https://example.com, "image":"https://example.com/image.png", "logo":"https://example.com/logo.png", "name":"Thynkli", "address":{ "@type":"PostalAddress", "addressCountry":"Canada", "addressRegion":"Ontario", "addressLocality":"Toronto", "postalCode":"V1V 1V1", "streetAddress":"555 Best Street" }, "telephone":"", "sameAs":[ "https://www.linkedin.com/company/username/about", "https://www.facebook.com/username", "https://twitter.com/username", "https://www.instagram.com/username" ] } </script> |
Article Structured Data
Data used for identifying article data on single article page.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 | <script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "NewsArticle", "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://google.com/article" }, "headline": "Article headline", "image": [ "https://example.com/photos/1x1/photo.jpg", "https://example.com/photos/4x3/photo.jpg", "https://example.com/photos/16x9/photo.jpg" ], "datePublished": "2015-02-05T08:00:00+08:00", "dateModified": "2015-02-05T09:20:00+08:00", "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "John Doe" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Google", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://google.com/logo.jpg" } }, "description": "A most wonderful article" } </script> |
You can find more information on article structured data here:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/article
Product Structured Data
Data used for identifying product data on single product page.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 | <script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "https://schema.org/", "@type": "Product", "name": "Executive Anvil", "image": [ "https://example.com/photos/1x1/photo.jpg", "https://example.com/photos/4x3/photo.jpg", "https://example.com/photos/16x9/photo.jpg" ], "description": "Sleeker than ACME's Classic Anvil, the Executive Anvil is perfect for the business traveler looking for something to drop from a height.", "sku": "0446310786", "mpn": "925872", "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "ACME" }, "review": { "@type": "Review", "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": "4", "bestRating": "5" }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Fred Benson" } }, "aggregateRating": { "@type": "AggregateRating", "ratingValue": "4.4", "reviewCount": "89" }, "offers": { "@type": "Offer", "url": "https://example.com/anvil", "priceCurrency": "USD", "price": "119.99", "priceValidUntil": "2020-11-20", "itemCondition": "https://schema.org/UsedCondition", "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock", "seller": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Executive Objects" } } } </script> |
You can find more information on product structured data here:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/product