What is Meta Data?
Meta Data are XHTML and HTML elements which are used to provide detailed and structured data about a website, making it easier for web crawlers to access information about various web pages. Such elements must be placed with in the head tag of a web pages' source code for it to take effect. Meta tags can be used to provide a websites description, keywords, content creator and many more.
This is an example of three different types of meta tags in use on a web page, the first one is telling the page to be served with a HTTP header called 'Content-Type' that has a value of 'text/html; charset=utf-8'. This is a common use of a meta tag, which specifies what type of document it is, so a web browser knows what content type to render.
The second meta tag is specifying what the keywords are for this page and the third meta tag is simply giving a quick description of the document.
Where are those META tags?
You can easily view a websites meta content by viwing the HTML source code, the source code is what the browser reads and interprets, then renders it to the user in a viewable manner depending on the source code.
The below is an excerpt from a Search Engine Optimization plan by Christopher Hair which can be found on our site here.
These are important to our site and how it will be listed by search engines. The meta description tag should be kept but again informative information should be given about the page that the tag is embedded into.
Meta keywords are also embedded into the pages code too and list keywords which relate to the page, although I researched this and was informed by various sources that search engines like to ignore this tag.
This is because webmasters could list hundreds of keywords which did not actually relate to the site and so influencing their ranking falsely.
"Much of the advice for your description tag also holds true for your Meta keywords tag. The keywords tag used to be very important when optimizing a website with all the search engines spidering and utilizing the information. When it became obvious to the search engines that webmasters were stuffing their keywords tags with dozens of unrelated search terms, the search engines moved away from algorithms that used information collected from keywords tags.
We are now at the stage where, very few search engines use the keywords tags to any significant degree. However, examine your traffic logs and you will be surprised at how many different search engines bring traffic to your website. I'll bet there are many small search engines, bringing traffic to your website, that you have never heard of before.
With many of these smaller search engines relying on older technology, and with it only taking a couple of minutes to add a keywords tag, it is worthwhile to at least look at the way you format your meta keywords tag." [1]
[1] Beal, A. Search Engine Optimization Basics Part 3 - Meta Tags,
http://www.searchengineguide.com/andy-beal/search-engine-optimization-basics-part-3-meta-tags.php,
Date accessed 25/12/2007.
