Optimise Meta Tags *

What are Meta Tags ?

Meta tags are HTML codes that are inserted into the top of a web page, after the title HTML code of the web page. In the context of search engine optimisation, when people refer to meta tags, they are usually referring to the meta description tag and the meta keywords tag, although there are a lot more meta tags that are used when optimising a website.

The meta description tag and the meta keywords tag are not seen by users. Instead, these tags main purpose is providing document data to search engines. In addition to the well-known meta description and meta keywords tags, there are other useful meta tags, including the meta http-equiv tag, meta refresh tag, meta robots tag, meta copyright tag, meta author tag, meta country tag, meta language tag, etc. These tags are used to give web browsers and search engine spiders directions data on various information.

Why do we need Meta Tags?

Meta tags are important for search engine optimisation for a couple of main reasons. The first being that some search engines use the contents of the keywords and description tags to determine the content of the page. In some search engines the content of these tags can have a bearing on the relevancy and ultimate rank of the document. The other reason is that some search engines use the contents of the description tag to display the snippet of information about the page in the search results page.

It should be noted that meta tags will not be the answer to your website's poor performance in the search engines. Very few search engines rely on the data in the description and keywords tags as they are wide open to abuse. Instead the major engines prefer to use their own algorithm to determine the keywords and phrases on the page. However, meta tags are still an important part of SEO and should be optimised to make full use of the engines that do use them.

* Included in QUAD's Search Engine Optimisation Packages