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View Source - Meta Tag View

A meta tag, also known as an HTML tag, is a bit of code between the two header tags in your source code that tells search engines what your site is all about. In our opinion meta tags are very important. While we have seen some sites rank high in search engines without the use of meta tags, we believe that they “can” play a role in your search engine optimization efforts.

Many SEOs have different opinions about the effectiveness of meta tags in search engine optimization. I have seen many websites without meta tags rank higher in search engine results due to other factors such as high PageRank and site/domain age. However, if you want to use best practices, you should definitely consider using meta tags. And, in many cases it works - I have seen pages sky rocket to the first page of search engines after meta tags were effectively optimized.

The header tags look like this:

<header>meta tags go here</header>

It can also look like this:

<header>
meta tags go here
</header>

The three most important meta tags are the Title tag, the Keyword tag, and the Description tag. There are other tags, but for the purposes of SEO, these three are the most important.

The default title tag looks like this:

<title>title goes here</title>

While this version of a title tag does not contain a “meta” attribute, I consider it a meta tag because it works alongside the keyword and description tag. Some SEOs also include a title tag with the “meta” attribute, such as this:

<meta name=”Title” content=”title goes here” />

This is a bit redundant since the <title></title> tags already take care of letting search engines know what the title of the page is. However, some SEOs use both versions within their code to define their title.

The keyword tag looks like this:

<meta name=”Keyword” content=”keywords go here” />

The description tag looks like this:

<meta name=”Description” content=”description goes here” />

When used properly, meta tags can “help”. It is also a cool way to control the anchor text and description displayed by Google, Yahoo, MSN, and others in their search results.

Note, the meta tags alone will not boost your page rank. It is not a magical or instant solution to higher placement in the search engines. I have determined 10 ingredients in effective SEO. Meta Tags comprise one of those ingredients.