Description and Keywords Metatags

Posted on 15/04/2009 by Viv

Meta tags are invisible sections of the HTML code of a web page.  They can be seen when you view the source code, but not when simply browsing a site.

If you do look at the HTML source code, you will see between the <head> and </head> tags several tags that look like '<meta .... />''.  Two of these tags are the Description and Keywords metatags.

Meta Description Tag

Example:
<meta name="description" value="We make the best coffee in New Zealand from our Auckland based cafe, along with many varieties of herbal teas and other herbal beverages." />

The meta description may have a small effect on search engine rankings, but much less than it used to have in the early days of the web.

It is often (but not always) used as the portion of text to display on the search engine results page (SERP).  Because of this alone, it's worth making this description tag a well formed sentence, relevant to the content of the website, as it might make the difference to whether a web user clicks through from the SERP. 

Don't make the description too long.  Many SERPs will cut off very long descriptions anyway.

Meta Keywords Tag

Probably not that useful these days as far as search engine rankings go, but it doesn't hurt to include them.  As with the description tag, don't get carried away and have a huge number of keywords.

Example:
<meta name="keywords" value="coffee, tea, teas, herbal beverages, drink, refreshments, Auckland, New Zealand." />

 

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