Meta tags are hidden HTML tags used to describe various aspects about a Web page. The two most important meta tags are the meta description and meta keywords tags. Let's take a closer look at each meta tag. Sample meta tags:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Meta Tags</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Guide to what meta tags are and how you should use them.">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="meta tags, free meta tag generators.">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
The contents of meta description tags are indexed by some search engines as the page description in its search engine results. However, meta description tags is often misused, with misleading or even false descriptions about a page. As a result, the relevancy of search results are often compromised, so search engines have begun to de-emphasize the importance and even totally ignore the contents of the tag.
The contents of a meta keyword tag is used to help define the important keywords of a page. It sounds good in theory. However, in practice, the meta keywords tag is often misused, including the addition of excessive or irrelevant keywords. So much so, that most, but not all, search engines totally ignore the contents of the meta keywords tag.
Inktomi is the only search engine that I know of that indexes the meta keywords tag. Since Inktomi provides search results for top search engines such as MSN, HotBot, and Overture, I would say it's probably worth the effort to include the meta keywords tag in your Web pages. If you do decide to use the meta keywords tag, I suggest that you only include the most important keyword phrase in the content of the tag. The meta keywords tag should be placed just after the meta description tag.
This is a question that has come up a lot and one that I have wondered about myself. Some search engine optimizers recommend leaving out the commas, so that it creates more keyword combinations for the search engines to index.
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