Search Engine Guide - Using Meta Tags
What are Meta Tags?
Meta tags are a part of the html code on your pages. They are used by the search engines to help the spiders analyze your site and two of the three meta tags are also used in the search listing itself.
Meta Keywords
This meta tag is not used as often as it used to be due primarily to "keyword stuffing" practices. It's still a good idea to include the keywords for each page in this tag both for your own use and for the small value this tag gives to overall ranking. Your site should have general keywords and phrases - those words that describe the site as a whole. There should also be specific keywords for each page.
For example - if your site is about nutritional supplements, you might also have individual pages about vitamins, minerals and perhaps diet supplements. The vitamins page probably won't have anything abut diet supplements in it's content, and should not include diet supplements in it's keyword meta tag. However it might use the keyword nutritional supplement a few times in the page copy, thus it is acceptable to have that key phrase in the meta keyword tag.
Don't just put keywords you want to be ranked for in the tag. You MUST back up that keyword by using it in your onpage text and in other tags. The spiders will determine what keywords are appropriate to your page when they visit. If you have used the word "vitamin" 10 times on your page, once in your title and twice in your description, but not included it in your keyword tag, the spiders will still consider that your page is about vitamins.
Likewise if you include the keyphrase "diet supplements" in your meta keyword tag but don't use it anywhere else on that page, it will be ignored by the engines.
Meta Title
This is probably the most important tag you can use for the engines. EVERY page should have a unique title that accurately describes the content on that page. This tag IS used by the spiders, plus it appears in the search listing itself. Not only does it appear, it's the first thing about your site a searcher sees and it is usually presented in bold type. It is a marketing tool, and an important one.
Title tags should ideally be about 12 words in length. Much longer and they will be truncated by the engines. Much shorter and they will convey little or no information for the human searcher reading your listing on the search results page.
Title tags contain NO punctuation. Some engines will consider hyphens, exclamation marks, question marks, etc. as "stop characters" and present nothing beyond those characters to the searcher.
Title tags need to make sense. They can not merely be keywords repeated over and over. Remember - real visitors see the text in a title tag. You don't need to capitalize every word, or you can use title capitalization rules. You do not need to use complete sentences in the title tag - it is after all a title. Try to use it as an attention grabbing headline. You'll get more visitors with a title that reads The Right Vitamins Help You Live Longer Live Better than you will with Vitamins in stock for everybody
Title tags should contain at least one of your main keywords or phrases. Don't repeat them more than twice in your title. The keyword or phrase should come as close to the beginning of the title as possible for best results.
Meta Description
This tag is the second most important tag for search engines. Again, like the title tag, it is read by the spiders and the search visitors. This tag needs to be grammatically correct, using complete sentences and proper punctuation. It will appear under the title on a search results page. Again try to use it as a marketing tool, placing your keywords and phrases within it in complete, readable sentences.
Most engines have a limit on how many words are displayed. The spiders will read everything in the description tag and use it to weight your rankings, but will usually display only the first 25 - 30 words. Make the first couple of sentences count! Try not use the same keyword or phrase more than three times in your description. Also try to work in both the general site keywords and the ones specific to that page.
Last but not least checkout the Quality Guidelines