SEO - Optimized Metatags

There are two important meta tags:

Meta description tags
Meta keyword tags

Some search engines may display the meta description as a part of the search results, but the meta keyword tags should not appear in search results.

The general consensus among SEO experts is that metatags are dead. Even so, many of these same experts continue to use metatags in their own sites.

For Google, adding the description meta tag does not result in a boost in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), but the description might be used for the description for your SERP listings in Google.

Yahoo! says, they use the Keyword Meta Tag when it ranks a page. Hence it makes sense to add one for Yahoo! and any other minor search engines that still use.

What Do the Metatags Look Like?

You can add the following in the head section of the web page:

<meta name="keywords"

content="KEYWORD1 KEYWORD2 KEYPHRASE1 etc. about 30 to 40 unique words">

<meta name="description"

content="An accurate, keyword-rich description about 150 characters">

Meta Description Tag Tips

Important tips for good Meta description tags:

Use keywords in your meta description tag.
Try not to repeat the words overly often, but try to use multiple syntaxes of your key words.
There should not be more than 150 characters in a description metatag of a single web page.
Use a different meta description tag for each page, as each page is different and stands a better chance of being found if you place a good title and description on it.

Meta Keywords Tag Tips

Please refer to the previous chapter for identifying good keywords. Use the following tips for preparing good meta keywords tags.
Use synonyms.
Use unique keywords.
No need to repeat any given phrase.
You can repeat a word any number of time, as long as each time it is part of a different phrase.

Robots Meta Tag

The important metatag that you may need sometime is the Robots Metatag which looks like this:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

Using the above metatag, you can tell a spider or a robot that you do not want some of your pages indexed, or that you do not want your links followed.