Meta tags won't magically push you to #1, but broken ones quietly cap your ceiling. Here's how the three that matter are actually read — plus copy-paste formats.
The title is what shows in the search result and the browser tab. Keep it under ~60 characters so it isn't truncated, put the primary keyword first, and make it a sentence a human wants to click.
<title>Free SEO Audit Tool — Check Any Site in Seconds</title>
Avoid stacking keywords ("SEO Tool | Best SEO | SEO Checker") — that reads spammy and can trigger a rewrite by Google.
Descriptions don't directly rank, but they drive clicks, and clicks send quality signals. Write one compelling sentence (≤155 chars) that promises the payoff.
<meta name="description" content="Run 70+ SEO checks free — meta tags, speed, security, and AI visibility. No signup.">
When someone pastes your link on X, LinkedIn, or Slack, OG tags decide the preview card. Missing them = an ugly bare link.
<meta property="og:title" content="MintShovels — Free SEO Audit"> <meta property="og:description" content="Check any site's SEO health in seconds."> <meta property="og:image" content="https://yoursite.com/cover.png">
Use a 1200×630 image so it renders large everywhere.
A few recurring errors show up in almost every site we audit. Duplicate titles across pages — when every product page says "Buy Online | Shop" — makes engines treat them as near-twins, diluting each one's chance to rank. The forgotten homepage often carries a placeholder like "Home" or the company legal name, wasting the most valuable tag on the site. Keyword stuffing in descriptions triggers rewrites. And missing OG tags means a great article shares as a bare gray link on social — a quiet traffic leak. None of these are hard to fix, but you have to see them first.
On a 200-page site, writing tags by hand isn't realistic. The pattern that works: build a template per page type (not per page), then fill in the unique variable. A blog post title might be "{Post topic} — {Site name}"; a category page "{Category} tools & guides". Keep the variable first, the brand last. For one-off or high-value pages, write fully custom. Our Meta Tags generator produces copy-paste HTML and live SERP previews so you can see truncation before you publish.