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SEO & Web Article - Meta Tags

Meta Tags

Meta tags are web page tags that contain information inserted into the "head" area of a web page.

As opposed to Title Tags, meta tags are less essential (though a good meta description can still be quite effective, see below, in SEO). The most valuable feature they offer the webmaster is the ability to control to a degree how that web page is going to be described on some search engines' result pages. This is less SEO related but as a way to convey a good first impression about a web site on search result pages, it can be quite useful.

Via the HTML code (Robot commands), meta tags also offer the ability of preventing search engines from crawling and indexing certain areas of web sites. Furthermore, meta information in the head area of web pages is used to communicate information that a visitor may not be concerned with. For example, it can tell a browser what "character set" to use, and other information unrelated to SEO.

Meta tag keywords had their heyday years ago when they were still considered to be quite important. However, in more recent years, their importance has drastically decreased. Today, they only serve to maybe reinforce other SEO tactics, and only on those search engines that support meta tag keywords.

Meta tag descriptions, on the other hand, are a useful search engine optimizing tool of providing visitors with a good description (and, see above, a favorable first impression) on search result pages.

To sum up: unlike the title tag which is a key tool in organic SEO, meta tags are much less likely to get your site a top ranking on crawler-based search engines. Nevertheless, a good meta tag description can be regarded as an "electronic business card" that briefly introduces your site to result page users, and which can occasionally even make a difference in favor of a higher search engine result page ranking.

For more information about our SEO and Web consulting services, or an absolutely free web site analysis and SEO consultation, we encourage you to contact us. Our SEO Montreal consultants will be pleased to help.

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