Free Meta tag generator
Original script by Daniel Toljaga. This interface, bug fix and text by Sean McManus.
Meta tags enable you to provide information about your website to search engines and other software programs. The most useful is probably the Title tag. This appears at the top of your browser bar, and as the title of links in your favourites menu. It's also used in most search engines as the text of the link to your site.
You can also suggest keywords and descriptions for your webpage. I say 'suggest' because most search engines are wising up to the fact that webmasters often lie about their page content to try to boost their site's ranking. Today fewer and fewer search engines rely on keyword meta tags. It's still worth entering them but it's counterproductive including keywords that don't also appear in your page text.
The free meta tag creation tool on this page will provide the code you need to add the most often used meta tags to your webpage. Enter the information in the forms, click the button and copy and paste the code provided between your webpage's HEAD tags.
Advanced webmasters can also generate the more advanced optional meta tags.
The most important meta tags
These are the ones it's a very good idea to complete...
- Title - each page needs a unique title describing that page. The W3C recommend keeping it to 64 characters. Google displays up to 66, cropping back to the last complete word. This tool will only let you enter 66 characters. Include keywords if relevant but put your company name first. Make sure any keywords appear in your page content.
- Description - used by search engines to describe your page. Keep it short and descriptive but include your desired search engine keywords. About 15 words maximum.
- Keywords - comma separated list of keywords and key search phrases (eg website design). Don't repeat keywords in the meta tags. Do ensure keywords also appear in your webpage copy.
Add meta tags to your pages
Once you've created your meta tags and they're in the form box above, copy them and paste them between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags of your webpage.
You should have different meta tags for each page on your site for two reasons:
- Different title tags are needed to tell the pages on your site apart when the titles are seen in isolation (eg, in links and favourites).
- Search engines won't look at massive lists of keywords or long titles - cycling the keywords you use in your meta tags enables you to suggest a wider range of keywords to search engines across your site.
