Meta tags are HTML codes that comprise the main keywords and phrases of a web page. Optimisation of these tags is imperative in order to secure better rankings on search engine result pages. These tags, although invisible to web users, are used by search engine spiders for crawling and indexing purposes. Therefore, the more optimised your meta tags are, the better will be your chances of getting high rankings.
Search engine optimisers ought to pay attention to all kinds of meta tags – title, description and keyword tags. These tags help search engines identify the purpose of the website. The words or phrases used in meta tags imply the content of the page itself. They provide you the opportunity of working around the process of optimisation and rake in increased profits for your site.
Title Tag
It is the text displayed on the top of your Internet browser window when someone clicks on a page. It is also the text that gets captured when a page is bookmarked. It is usually taken as 60 characters by popular search engines. Cover your main keywords and phrases in these many characters so as to increase the relevancy of your page. According to SEO service providers, you should use important keywords in the beginning of the tag so that it is displayed in bold on SERPs.
Description Tag
It is the descriptive text placed as an HTML code, and summarises the content of your web page. Web users always prefer to read through the description before opening a link. The text used for description tag should be appealing enough to tempt a visitor into clicking a page. Within 25-30 words, write a brief and informative description.
Keywords Tag
Take help from keyword selection tools available online and make a keyword list of your own. Search engine optimisation experts insist that these words should be both competitive and traffic oriented. Along with incorporating these keywords in the content of your page, you should use them in the keywords tag so as to attract crawlers and get your page indexed.
Apart from the aforementioned tags, a website can also have a 'robots' tag which allows webmasters to secure pages that they do not wish to get crawled or indexed by search engines. Adhere to guidelines set by search engines and you can actually manipulate your rankings through simple optimisation techniques.
Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_217903_62.html
