The 5 SEO tags that actually matter

What Google reads first

Of the ~30 meta tags floating around, only 5 consistently move the needle for indexing + ranking:

<title>Page-specific title under 60 chars | Brand</title>
<meta name="description" content="155-char value-first sentence." />
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/the-real-url" />
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />

The other 25 (keywords, author, generator, revisit-after, …) Google explicitly ignores OR uses only as weak hints.

Per-page, not site-wide

Every URL needs its own title + description. Generating these from a CMS field or a per-route component is critical. "Welcome to MyApp" on every page is a ranking killer.

robots: when to NOT index

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />     <!-- temporary pages, search results -->
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />   <!-- staging, admin -->
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />       <!-- default; rarely worth writing -->

Index any page meant for public discovery. Noindex any thin or dynamic page (search results, paginated archives beyond page 1, user-generated drafts).

What's NOT here

• <meta name="keywords"> — Google said publicly in 2009 they ignore it. Still ignored.
• <meta name="author"> — fine to include, doesn't help rankings.
• <meta http-equiv="..."> — almost all replaced by real HTTP headers.