Meta Tags

Meta tags are used to provide structured metadata , or data about data, about a web page . The metadata is embedded to the page by adding one or more meta elements to the head section of the HTML document.

The two most popular Meta tags used for search engine optimization is the Meta description tag and Meta keyword tag. The Meta description tag allows web site owners to describe what the web page is about. Search engines such as Google still use this to display the description of a web site in the search results. The Meta keyword tag allows site owners to put keywords in it to help search engines decide what a web site is about.

In the early 2000s, search engines veered away from reliance on Meta tags, as many web sites used inappropriate keywords or were keyword stuffing to obtain any and all traffic possible.

Some search engines, however, still take Meta tags into some consideration when delivering results. In recent years, search engines have become smarter, penalizing web sites that are cheating (by repeating the same keyword several times to get a boost in the search ranking). Instead of going up in the ranking, these sites will go down in ranking or on some search engines, will be kicked out of the search engine completely.