Meta tags are coded elements/ page definitions used to provide the descriptive elements of a particular webpage inserted into the “head” area. Most importantly, Meta tags are vital assets to SEO. Some of the most important fundamentals of SEO, such as DESCRIPTION, TITLE and KEYWORD tags are considered Meta tags. Although there are other Meta tags, we are only going to concentrate on these three.
The TITLE is a viewable Meta tag to people who are visiting your website and is by far the most important. This tag is what will appear in a search engine’s results page as the clickable text that will direct searchers to your website. The TITLE tag should always contain your keyword and be the one aspect of not only Meta tags, but also SEO that you should put a lot of effort into creating. The TITLE tag is also the text that is used when someone bookmarks or adds your page to their favorites list. Some specialists suggest placing your company’s name in all of your TITLE tags within your site.
The Meta DESCRIPTION tag allows you to summarize the content on your page and inform the crawlers what your page is about. Some search engines ignore your description tag and allow their bots to devise their own summation. The most efficient and quickest way to add copy to your DESCRIPTION tag is to copy a few sentences from the content on that page
The KEYWORDS tag allows you to fine-tune the content into a few words that you feel are the most important about the copy listed on that page. Again, not all search engines will crawl this Meta tag, but it still can have the opportunity to improve your ranking. You should never repeat words more than three times in this Meta tag or search engine robots may penalize you for using duplicate content.
Meta tags can improve your ranking status, make your site SEO friendly and increase your organic click-through rate. However, be sure not to engage in heavy keyword stuffing, where you repeatedly place your keyword in all your Meta tags. Search engines have updated their systems to ignore this. So, be descriptive and use your keyword frequently, but do not abuse this privilege or it will cost you!