Meta Tags 101 – The What and the Why

If only it was as simple as producing a website with plenty of decent content and watching the traffic roll in – it sadly isn’t. Instead, a website is a complex creature with several dimensions to take into account when it comes to bringing in both readers and those all-important crawlers.The thing to remember is that no matter what search term a web user puts into Google, they will be returned with millions of results – all gunning for their business. And given that the name of a website and the words contained in its link don’t exactly give a detailed description of what to expect, it’s up to something else to do this – the meta tag.     So, What Is a Meta Tag?In the simplest of terms, a meta tag is the small snippet of information that appears under the headers featured in the results rankings. You’ve seen them a million and one times, but maybe you’ve never even realised what you were looking at. This one or two lines of information is what’s used to tell you what the site has to offer and basically sell it to you enough to make that all-important click. It doesn’t actually appear on the website itself, but is instead kept behind the scenes for search traffic only.Easy enough to grasp, but there are actually two different types of these tags you need to know about – those being the meta keywords tag and the meta description tag.Meta Descriptions TagThis is the kind of tag that tells those looking at your link in the search rankings about the page it links to. It’s a small description under the header that goes into a little bit more detail to get the message across.As an example, if you carry out a search for “Pepsi” and find the link to the official PepsiCo website, the meta description tag reads: ”Official site for PepsiCo (parent company of Pepsi, Frito-Lay and Tropicana)”.Behind the scenes, the HTML used to put this tag in place would read:<meta name=”description” content=”Official site for PepsiCo (parent company of Pepsi, Frito-Lay and Tropicana)” />Meta Keywords TagAs far as the meta keywords tag goes, this is the type of tag that is used to make Google and other search engines aware of what it is the page it links to is all about. This takes a similar form as follows:<meta name="keywords" content="keywords, keyword, keyword phrase, etc.">So, Why Are Meta Tags Important?Meta Tags represent a hugely important element of the SEO process and can be of exceptional benefit to those able to get them right. Like the rest of the tools in the SEO box, it’s of little use if relied upon on its own and must be considered part of an overall puzzle.Strong meta tags aren’t guaranteed to have you right at the top of the first page of rankings, but at the same time you won’t earn the clicks you’re vying for if your metas aren’t up to scratch.