Do you use meta description tags?

One of the easiest ways to get the ball rolling with your web pages and being noticed by search engines is to use HTML <meta> tags. Years ago, many webmasters took this as an opportunity to abuse the <meta> tags and the search engines found that the quality of search results was suffering. Today, search engines don't give the <meta> tags so much weight - Google announced in September of 2009 that neither meta descriptions nor meta keywords affects Google's ranking algorithms for web searches.

In any case, we think it would be silly to overlook such a quick and easy task to complete.

There are many kinds of <meta> tags you should use, these are the most common:

• META DESCRIPTION - Search engines will use the information in the <meta> description tag as well as the <title> to display a brief summary of your site that goes along with its link on search results. SEO experts recommends it to have between 50–160 characters. Learn more on Meta Description
• META KEYWORDS (less important) - This holds words that you can use to help search engines classify your content. The keywords you use should be relevant to your content and appear in the body text as well. Learn more on Meta Keywords: Should You Use Them?

View more on <meta> tags

We have a program called SSW Code Auditor to check for this rule.