Meta Tag Explained

HTML has certain tags, called Meta Tags, the represent metadata about a specific webpage. When viewing a webpage, you will not see the Meta Tab nor does it have any impact on the appearance of the web page. If a user wants to view the Meta Tags associated with a webpage, they have to view the HTML source code for that webpage.

The two types of tags available are Meta description tags and the Meta keywords tags. The Meta description tag is used to describe the nature and purpose of the webpage that is created. For instance, if the webpage is about drug rehab then the meta description would be similar to “Information on drug rehab”. The Meta keywords tags are words that help the search engine to find the webpage during search. For example the Meta keywords for the above mentioned example would be drug rehad, alcohol rehab, drug abuse, drug prevention, help with drugs rehabilitation, etc. These words are visible to the search engine when a user places the keyword in search.

Both type of the tags are located in the HEAD tag of the html code in below mentioned manner.

The main purpose of the Meta tags are to proved a way for search engines and web crawlers to easily gain information about your website. The more details you provide about your website, the greater the chances that search engines will identify your site in a list of search results for a user looking for related information.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization dictates that you create keywords that are specific to your site and that the meta tags you create in your heading be found on the webpage as well. So, using a inappropriate web like “flower box or “dog treat” will not end up in appropriate result.

Some web crawlers ignore meta keywords tags and meta description tags such as larger search engines like Google and Yahoo. These web crawlers will search the content of your site instead of meta keywords.

Unfortunately, this is necessary because of the rampant abuse of unrelated Meta Tags by webmasters in an attempt to drive traffic to their sites. Keep this in mind when you are deciding what content to place on your site. If you want a webpage to be identified by the large search engines for a specific topic, make sure that you include the key term several times in your pages text. If you want your site to be listed as one of the top results for search engines, make sure that your site contains well written information that is related to the the theme of your webpage and is obviously written by a human knowledgeable on the subject.

Justin Harrison is an internationally recognised Internet Marketing expert who provides world class SEO Services to website owners.