Essential Meta Tags for SEO: Open Graph, Twitter Cards & More
Basic Meta Tags
Always include charset UTF-8 to tell browsers how to interpret text characters. Include a viewport meta tag for responsive design: width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0. Your title tag should be 50-60 characters and your meta description 150-160 characters. Include target keywords naturally in both. Make descriptions compelling since they appear in search results.
Open Graph Tags
Core OG tags include og:title, og:description, og:image, og:url, and og:type. OG images should be 1200x630 pixels in JPEG or PNG format. Include og:image:type, og:image:width, and og:image:height. For articles, add og:type as "article" with article:published_time, article:modified_time, article:author, and article:section. For videos, use og:type "video.other" with og:video, og:video:type, og:video:width, and og:video:height.
Twitter Card Tags
Twitter has its own card system with types like summary (small image on side) and summary_large_image (large image above text). Complete setup includes twitter:card, twitter:site, twitter:title, twitter:description, twitter:image, twitter:image:alt, and twitter:creator. Twitter cards work alongside OG tags for optimal display.
SEO Meta Tags
Use robots meta tag to control how search engines crawl and index content. Set canonical URL to prevent duplicate content issues. For multilingual sites, use alternate hreflang tags. For paginated content, use rel:prev and rel:next. Implement structured data using JSON-LD format with schema.org types like Article, WebPage, Organization, etc.
Testing and Validation
Use Google Search Console to see how Google indexes pages. Use Mobile-Friendly Test for mobile usability. Validate structured data with Schema.org validators. Use Facebook Sharing Debugger for OG tags. Use Twitter Card Validator for Twitter tags. Use Lighthouse for SEO and performance audits. Always test that title is 50-60 characters, description is 150-160 characters, OG image is 1200x630, all OG tags are included, Twitter cards are set, canonical URL is correct, robots meta tag is appropriate, and structured data is valid.