What are Meta Tags?

Meta Tags

When you look at the HTML source code of a web page (ctrl+u, page > source or view > source in some browsers) you may find some  lines with “meta” in them.


<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 3.1.2" />
<meta name="description" content="Find out how you can have San Antonio web design services better, faster, cheaper for your small business." />
<meta name="keywords" content="San Antonio web design, Texas web design, web design, San Antonio website development, web designers, web development, web design company, web designers, web developers" />

…or many other meta tags, such as “owner,” “robots,” and many others. But these are some of the main ones.

Meta tags, in general, contain information about the web page. Usually only computers read this information.

Meta Generator

The “generator” tag describes the software used to make the website. Typically this is inserted automatically by the software. Some designers remove this line, either because they feel it important for their business to keep their software a secret, or they think it makes them less vulnerable to online attacks. I disagree on both points: I feel transparency is important, and what I’ve read online indicates that automated attacks rarely, if ever, bother to check the generator tag before attempting their attack on a given website.

Meta Keywords

In the early days of the Internet, the meta keywords tag was developed to that website authors could responsibly pick out a few keywords that best defined the topic of their page, as this would be much easier for search engines than trying to read the text of the page intelligently and deciding.

Of course, immediately every web designer started filling the tag full of every word of variation of their keywords they could think of–often even words that had nothing whatsoever to do with the topic of their site. They just wanted to show high in search results, no matter what the search phrase was.  The tag shown is actually from another web design firm’s site–I won’t say who, so as not to embarrass them.

Less and less importance was played on the keywords tag. Now Google does not use the meta keywords tag at all. It’s possible some very minor search engines may still place a slight value in it for now, but including the meta keywords tag in your website just makes it look like you don’t know SEO.

Meta Description

The meta description tag is important because it is seen by human beings. Google recommends using a meta description. Google does not use the meta description as a factor to judge website ranking, but it often (not always) displays the Meta Description in search results. Given that people looking at a list of Google search results typically only see the title of your website and the meta description, it can make a difference in making sure you are the one they click on.

Google will sometimes, if they feel it is more appropriate to the user’s search, give a snippet of text from the page instead of the meta description. This is also what they will do if there is no meta description, and this can be fine. You just don’t want to do what this one township in Texas had in their search results:

Place your website description in this area. This is read by some search engines.


Obviously, that is less than professional! Their web designer must have used some sort of template with text pre-filled in the meta description and never changed it. Now, anytime someone googles the township, this shows underneath the site name.

See below for examples from two different results on the front page of a Google search for “San Antonio web design.” Which would you be more likely to click on?


Mar 14, 2011 ... San Antonio Texas Website Design, Web Developers, web hosting, domain name, mobile app development San Antonio Texas, iphone app development

San Antonio Web Design and Internet Marketing Firm specializing in Affordable Search Engine Optimization SEO. FREE consultation with Sonny Melendrez, ...

The first is nothing more than “keyword-stuffing”–a blatant attempt to trick the search engines, which is all the more sad since Google publicly states that they don’t consider the meta description in their algorithms.

The second is written for people. It’s a marketing pitch, which is great! It’s designed to get people to click. The only problem is that Google cut off the end of the description–where Sonny’s phone number was listed. Google cuts off meta descriptions around the 150 character mark (only slightly longer than a tweet), so you have to be very concise.