Yes – You Can Still Capture Traffic From <Meta> Tags

A couple of years ago, <Meta> Tags were the primary tool for search engine optimization and there was a direct correlation between the <Meta> Tag words and phrases AND your position in search results.

However, algorithms changed (as they frequently do) and the importance of <Meta> Data is decreasing day by day - especially with Google. But - some search engines continue to show <Meta> Data under the clickable link in search results, so people doing searches can see what you have written.  If they think it is relevant, they may go to your site.

Some of the more specialized search engines still use the <Meta> Tags when ranking your site.

The <Meta> Description Tag is one more way for you to write a description of your site, thus pointing search engines to what themes and topics your website is relevant to. It does not hurt to include at least a brief description, so don't skip it.

Using the dog adoption site as an example, the <Meta> Description Tag could be something like this:  

<Meta Name="Description" Content="Adopting a dog saves a life and brings joy to your house. All you need to know when you consider adopting a dog.">

A potential use of the <Meta> Keywords Tags is to include a list of keywords that you think are relevant to your pages.

The major search engines will not take this into account, but there is a chance for you to emphasize your target keywords. You may consider including alternative spellings (or even common misspellings of your keywords) in the <Meta> Keywords Tag.

For instance, if I were to write the <Meta> keywords Tag for the dog adoption site, I would do it like this:

<Meta name="Keywords" Content="adopt, adoption, dog, dogs, puppy, canine, save a life, homeless animals">

It is a small boost to search engine top ranking, but why miss the chance?

The <Meta> Robots Tag deserves more attention. In this Tag, you specify the pages that you do NOT want crawled and indexed. More than likely, you have content on your site that needs to remain, but you don't want it indexed. Listing these pages in the <Meta> Robots Tag is one way to exclude them.

The other way is by using a robots.txt file, and generally this is the better way to keep it from being indexed.