Meta Tags are information inserted in area of HTML code of your web pages, where apart from Title Tag, other information inserted is not visible to person surfing your web page but is intended for search engine crawlers. Meta Tags are included so that search engines are able to list your site in their indexes more accurately.

Using Meta Tags in HTML is not necessary while making your web pages. There are many websites that don’t feel requirement to use Meta Tags at all. In short Meta information is used to communicate information to search engine crawlers that a human visitor may not be concerned with. Infoseek and AltaVista were first major crawler based search engines to support Meta keywords Tag in 1996. Inktomi and Lycos too followed thereafter.

Why are Meta Tags used?

Meta Tags were originally designed to provide webmasters with a way to help search engines know what their site was about. This in turn helped search engines decide how to rank sites in their search results. Making Meta Tags is a simple process. As competition increased, webmasters started manipulating this tool through spamming of keywords. In turn most search engines withdrew their support to Meta keywords Tag, which included Lycos and AltaVista. From being considered as one of most reliable and important tool, Meta Tags are now often abused. In present day scenario a vital feature that Meta Tags provide to websites is ability to control, to a certain extent, how some search engines describe its web pages. Apart from this, Meta Tags also offer ability to specify that a certain website page should not be indexed.

Using Meta Tags, however, provides no guarantee that your website page would rank highly in search engine rankings. Due to rampant abuse and manipulation of Meta keywords Tag by webmasters, most search engines don't support it anymore.

Types of Meta Tags

The more important Meta Tags are discussed below in detail.

The Title Tag

And you're getting traffic, but it's not boosting business. So what's wrong?

Especially as a professional service provider, it is not enough to simply direct traffic - web surfers are extremely unlikely to purchase your services based on a single visit to your website. They will research, they will compare. They will only approach you once they have reason to trust you, and trust themselves for choosing you.

Your true website prospects are return visitors; for marketing purposes, everything else is background noise. Use these techniques to cut through that noise, by providing an online resource worthy of repeat traffic - a website that your clients will love:

Don't sell. Provide. It is important to understand that on Internet, user is in complete control of transaction: hard selling will not work, and will probably antagonize your prospects. Skip pitch, and instead build a website that serves as a true information resource.

Write and post articles that directly relate to your expertise - if you are a CPA, consider writing articles about financial planning or importance of tax records; a dentist might write articles about myths of gum care or differences between common filling types. Provide a public place where you answer questions of website users. Keep your website content rich and timely.