Meta tags are snippets of text that describe a page’s content; the meta tags don’t appear on the page itself, but only in the page’s code. We all know tags from blogs, and meta tags are more or less the same thing, little content descriptors that help tell search engines what a web page is about.
The only difference between tags you can see (on a blogpost, say) and tags you can’t see is location: meta tags only exist in HTML, usually at the “head” of the page, and so are only visible to search engines (and people who know where to look). The “meta” stands for “metadata,” which is the kind of data these tags provide – data about the data on your page.
There are four major types of meta tags worth knowing about and we’ll talk about them all here. Some are not as useful as they once were. Others are worth using regularly, and will very likely increase your traffic by letting Google know who you are and what you provide.
Meta Keywords Attributes - A series of keywords you deem relevant to the page in question.
Meta Description Attributes - A short (tweet length) sentence which describes the content of the page.
Title Tag - This is the text you'll see at the top of your browser. Search engines view this text as the "title" of your page.
Meta Robots Attribute - An indication to search engine crawlers (robots or "bots") as to what they should do with the page.