Meta tags are void elements in HTML5, meaning they don't have closing tags and the self-closing slash is optional. You can write <meta name="description" content="..."> or <meta name="description" content="..." /> and both are valid. Modern browsers treat them the same way. The confusion comes from XHTML (early 2000s), which required the slash for all void elements. If you're working with legacy XHTML doctypes or XML parsing, you still need it. But if you're using HTML5 (<!DOCTYPE html>), which you should be in 2025, the slash is purely stylistic. What actually matters for SEO is proper meta tag syntax and placement. Your meta tags should sit inside the <head> section, use correct attribute names (name/property for type, content for the value), and avoid duplication. A missing or malformed meta description won't break your page's crawlability, but it means Google writes its own snippet, often poorly. At Ottawa SEO, we write meta tags without the trailing slash in our templates because it's cleaner HTML5 and one less character to maintain across 500+ domains. Our CMS strips inconsistencies anyway. The practical concerns are: - Ensure each page has one meta description and one viewport tag - Keep descriptions between 140–155 characters to avoid truncation - Use property="og:..." for Open Graph tags (Facebook/LinkedIn) - Don't stuff keywords into meta keywords tag (Google ignores it since 2009) If you're migrating from old XHTML templates, test a few pages in Google's Rich Results Test or validator.w3.org to confirm everything parses. Browsers are forgiving, but consistency prevents edge-case issues with certain parsers or feed readers. The closing slash debate is a non-issue for ranking, but sloppy head structure signals low-quality development, and that often correlates with worse technical SEO elsewhere on the site.