Class 16 – Meta Tags and X-Robot Tags |
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The Meta Title Tag
What is the use of a meta title? What the overview of your page will be on Google’s search results page, and how your website will appear, depends on your meta title. You can see this meta title in the tag by going to the source code of your website or page.
Google can use both the
<title></title> tag and <meta name="title" content="" /> method to show your meta title, so both are correct.Google can rewrite your meta titles because when a user searches for a query, Google may find many pages with good content, but the SEO person may not have written the meta title properly. In that case, Google will rewrite your page’s meta title according to the user’s query intent. Google does this so that your website and page get more clicks because the content is good.
Sometimes Google shows your H1 or a sentence from your content that you have written in a different way, means text that is displayed in a larger size. Sometimes Google’s system gets confused and considers that text important, so it shows it instead of your meta title. The solution is to keep your meta title and H1 as similar as possible so that Google’s system does not get confused.
Always write the meta title in camel case, and the limit of a meta title is 60 characters. You can write up to 60 to 70 characters, but the practice should be to write the meta title within 60 characters with the brand name. It is very important that your brand name should be included in the meta title.
You have to write the meta title of your page in a unique way. You can also use emojis in it, and make sure that you write the meta title in the same language as your website, so that your meta title matches the content of your web page.
The Meta Description Tag
The meta description appears below the meta title on Google’s search results pages. A meta description is an opportunity to tell your users what type of information your webpage contains and what users will get from your webpage.
If you find it hard to write a meta description, you can also write a good meta description by combining all the H2 headings of your webpage. Writing the meta description within 160 characters is the best practice, but you can write it up to 170 characters without any issues.
If you have not created a meta description for your page, Google creates a meta description by combining your H1 and H2 and shows it in the search results.
<meta name=”description” content=”” />Meta descriptions are written in sentence form, like ‘This page is about to tell you the best practices to write meta titles and descriptions. Grammatical and spelling mistakes should not be made, these are the rules.
The No-Index Tag
As the name itself suggests, it prevents any page, URL, or file from appearing in Google Search. It tells Google Search not to index that particular URL.
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />
This code tells Google not to index the page on which it is added.
It is a clear instruction not to index the page.
The "No Follow" Tag
If any page has nofollow written on it, it means that Googlebot will not follow any of the links on that page, whether they are internal or external. Whenever Googlebot finds a URL, it follows it by default, but if you add nofollow at the page level, Google will not follow any of the links on that entire page.
<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow” />
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow” />People also use both of these together. It means you are telling Google not to index this page, and you are also telling Google not to visit any link found on that page.
The None Tag
“None” is a substitute for both “noindex” and “nofollow.” It means that if you add none to any page, that page will become noindex and nofollow.
<meta name=”robots” content=”none” /> = <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow” />
The No Snippet Tag
If you want Google not to show your content in the featured snippet, you can use the nosnippet tag. As soon as you add it, Google will stop showing your content in the featured snippet.
Generally, you should not use this tag on a page because if your content appears in the featured snippet, the chances of getting clicks increase and your website’s reputation also increases. Featured snippets are also called position zero.
<meta name=”robots” content=”nosnippet” />If there is something special in your content, means you want that content to be shown only when users visit the page, then you can also add the nosnippet tag to a paragraph. For this, you have to add the “nosnippet” tag to the “div” tag that contains that particular paragraph.
<div data-nosnippet>Text content that you don't want to show in the feature snippets</div>
The Max Snippet Tag
It means you can set how large the snippet should be, means you can set the limit of how many characters Google should show in the snippet.
<meta name=”robots” content=”max-snippet:-1” />
If you use this, you are giving Google a free hand, means you are telling Google that it can
create a snippet of any length from your content.<meta name=”robots” content=”max-snippet:0” />
If you use this, the snippet will not be shown because you have set it to 0, which means it becomes a nosnippet.<meta name=”robots” content=”max-snippet:100” />
Here, what you are doing is giving Google permission to create a snippet of 100 characters by using your
content.Whatever character limit you set here, Google can create the snippet using that number of characters.
The Index If Embedded Tag
If you want the images used in your page content not to appear in Google search results, then you add noindex to the image. But by doing this, Google will have difficulty ranking your page because images are an important part, and if Google cannot use them, it will have difficulty ranking the page. That is why Google introduced the “Index If Embedded” tag. This tag is always used with the noindex tag.
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />
<meta name=”robots” content=”indexifembedded” />If you use this, your image will remain noindex, so Google cannot show it in the Image Search section. But Google can show it in the page content because when someone opens the page, the image will be shown with the content. It will not be shown anywhere outside the page.
The Max Images Preview Tag
If you are using a particular image on your website as the featured image of your webpage, then do you want Google to use that image while creating the snippet? You can tell this through the “Max Image Preview” tag.
<meta name=”robots” content=”max-image-preview:none” />
If you use this code, you are telling Google not to use your page's images in any snippets.<meta name=”robots” content=”max-image-preview:standard” />
If you use this code, you are telling Google to use the image for snippets, but in a small size.<meta name=”robots” content=”max-image-preview:large” />
If you use this code, you are telling Google that it can use your page's images for snippets in a large size.
The Unavailable After Tag
By using this tag, you can tell Google not to show your page in Google Search results after a particular date and time.
<meta name=”robots” content=”unavailable_after:2025-12-25” />
The X-Robot Tag
If you want a PDF file on your page not to appear in Google Search results, you can add this tag through the http-header.php file.
<Files “report.pdf”> Header set X-Robots-Tag “noindex” </Files>