How to add meta tags in Drupal?

@elliott 

Adding meta tags in Drupal can help improve your site's SEO and provide significant information to search engines and social media platforms. Here's how you can add and manage meta tags in Drupal:

Installing the Metatag Module

1. Download the Metatag Module: Go to the Metatag module page on drupal.org. Download the module or use Composer to install it. The Composer command is usually: composer require drupal/metatag
2. Enable the Module: Go to your Drupal admin interface. Navigate to Extend. Search for "Metatag" and check the box next to it. Click on the "Install" button at the bottom.

Configure Meta Tags

1. Access Metatag Configuration: Navigate to Configuration > Search and metadata > Metatag.
2. Set Default Meta Tags: You can define global meta tags by editing the "Global" configuration. These will apply to the entire site unless overridden elsewhere.
3. Add Meta Tags to Specific Content Types: Under the Metatag configuration page, you'll see options to add meta tags settings for various entities like content types, taxonomies, and user profiles. Click "Add default" next to the entity you want to configure. Fill in the meta tags fields. You can use tokens to dynamically generate meta tag values.
4. Override Meta Tags on Individual Nodes: When editing a node, you should see a "Meta tags" tab or fieldset, depending on your theme or admin interface design. Here, you can override any of the default meta tags for this specific piece of content.

Tips

• Use Tokens: Tokens are placeholders that represent dynamic content. For example, [node:title] can be used in the title tag to refer to the current node's title.
• SEO Best Practices: Ensure that meta tags have relevant and concise content. Titles should be around 50-60 characters, and descriptions should be between 150-160 characters for optimal display in search results.
• Preview Changes: After applying changes to meta tags, use a tool like Google's Rich Results Test or Fetch as Google in Search Console to preview how your meta tags appear to search engines.

By following these steps, you can efficiently manage meta tags in Drupal, helping improve your site's SEO and ensuring better control over how your content is presented to users and search engines.