What are Meta Tags, and their purpose?
Meta tags are located in the HEAD section of the HTML code. They inform web crawlers about the web page and are primarily used by search engines to help web crawlers more easily index your pages. Creating meta tags on your page will increase the chances of coming up in a search result.
KEYWORD meta tags are no longer used by search engines. At one time they were an important tag on your website. They were used so that search engine crawlers could match to the same words, which rank your website higher in the search index. However, today Google and any major search engine no longer pay attention to the Keyword tag because it led to a lot of people spamming the meta tag area.
The search engines now focus on the TITLE and DESCRIPTION meta tags in determining a web page’s authority, along with the content of the web page. The name and description entered into these tags is what appears in the search engines, and they are the first thing a user will see on the search result, so these meta tags should be well written, and within the character length limits (50–60 characters for the Meta Title, and 155–160 characters for the Meta Description). Anything longer than that will be cut off with three dots '...'
As an example, here is the search result for Sunset Fire Designs):
The Title meta tag is indexed by the big three engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing), and though it is average importance in terms of SEO, it is of high importance with respect to attracting users. For this reason, your website Title should grab attention and create enough curiosity to evoke the user to click on your link, and the Description meta tag should contain well-written information on what your website is about.
I take great care in designing and coding websites that are search engine friendly and optimized for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with indexable content that performs better in search engine listings.
This is a great article to read for a better understanding of SEO: "The Beginner's Guide to SEO".
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