How to use Meta Tags
When the HTML language was first created, it was recognized that new tags would later be needed for specialized purposes. Since there wasn't any way to anticipate every possible need, the META tag was created as a sort of "catch-all." These tags allow Webmasters to issue an unlimited variety of commands, or to provide information to a browser, search engine, or automated program (i.e., robot). The tags are ignored by default unless the browser or search engine specifically recognizes them.
Meta tags are contained in the HEAD section near the top of the page. They're not displayed to the end user unless you view the source code of the page. The two most common meta tags, and the ones we are most concerned about in this article are keyword and description tags.
The meta keyword tag is designed to tell the search engine what keywords are important to your page, and thereby how people should be able to find you when they search. It should look something like the following:
<META name="keywords" content="my keywords should be listed here">
Although you can list as many keywords as you like, most search engines will not read more than about 1000 characters. Include your most important keywords at the start of the tag.
The meta description tag is primarily used for telling the search engine what description you want associated to the page in the search engine's results. It should look something like this:
<META name="description" content="A short description of my Web site goes here.">
It's essential that you create a compelling description for your page to entice people to click through from the search results.
Each engine that supports the meta description tag will truncate it down to 150 to 400 characters depending on the engine. Therefore, include the best portion of your description in the first 150 characters, but go ahead and add additional sentences to fill it out to about 400 characters.
It doesn't matter what order you place the tags in the HEAD area, although it's recommended that you include the TITLE tag first on the page, before listing any other tags.
This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software, the makers of WebPosition Gold. FirstPlace Software helped define the SEO industry with the introduction of the first product to track your rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings. A free trial of WebPosition Gold is available from their Web site.