Meta Tag Use in Search Engine Optimization

Meta Tag

Meta elements provide information about a given
webpage, most often to help search engines categorize
them correctly, and are inserted into the HTML code in
the format illustrated above, but are not visible to a
user looking at the site.

They have been the focus of a field of marketing research
known as search engine optimization (SEO), where different
methods are explored to provide a user's site with a higher
ranking on search engines. In the mid to late 1990s, search
engines were reliant on meta data to correctly classify a web
page and webmasters quickly learned the commercial
significance of having the right meta element, as it frequently
led to a high ranking in the search engines - and thus, high
traffic to the web site.

As search engine traffic achieved greater significance in
online marketing plans, consultants were brought in who
were well versed in how search engines perceive a web site.
These consultants used a variety of techniques
(legitimate and otherwise) to improve ranking for their clients.