Meta Tags. What They Are and Why To Use Them

Aug 17th 09 Posted by Stephen Grisham Sr. in SEO

by Stephen Grisham Sr.

Search engines and people (indirectly) use meta tags.

Are meta tags critical? Every search engines emphasizes meta tags differently. Google doesn’t let the public know how it uses meta tags. I have noticed that a lot of websites show up on the first page of Google for specific subjects and yet they don’t have any keyword or description tags. So don’t let anybody fool you by exaggerating how important they are for Search Engine Optimization. Search engines index algorithms vary greatly — some assign a lot of importance to meta tags, so it is a good idea to use them.

Meta tags are lines of code that are hidden in web pages. The code information is not revealed in the web browser (but refer to the discussion of the description tag, below) but they are utilized by search engines to help categorize your web content. It is possible that you might choose to omit descriptions, or keywords, but your site won’t look right if you don’t put a “title” tag, since the web browsers will show it as “Untitled”.

In order to obtain traffic (by cheating) a long time ago, people would place repetitive or irrelevant information into their meta tags — “stuffing” them. As a penalty, several search engines don’t put too much importance on keywords in meta tags, but they still look at them to be certain they have meaning. Whichever the case, your rank will probably suffer on other search engines if you lack meta tags, or have useless keywords.

The “head” section of the web page is where meta tags are located. Some say don’t use any capitalization for keywords, and to stay away from repeating terms in the keyword tag.

Generally speaking, the actual meta tag contents appear invisible, however the “description” meta tag’s contents will turn up in the majority of search engines together with the page title in the search results. Make sure that the meta description is concise and relevant (you can place some keywords in the description tag, but avoid going overboard).

About the Author:

Stephen Grisham, Sr. is a copy writer for InfoServe Media, LLC. If you are looking for a Houston web site designer, look no further. If you need a few changes to your current site, InfoServe Media also offers website maintenance whether we host your site or not.