Meta tags are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a web page placed in the head section. Meta tags can be used to specify page description, keywords and any other Meta data not provided through the other head elements and attributes of a web page.

Let's discuss about the Meta tags that are important from a search engine optimization perspective.

Meta description tag and the Meta keywords tag

Meta description tag is intended to give a description about what the page speaks about. This information normally would show under search results for that webpage if listed in a search engine.

Eg:

Meta name="description" content="Honda car dealership nationwide"

Meta keywords tag allows the webmaster to lay down a few keywords that would ideally act as an indicator to the search engines to know what the page speaks about. Search engines assume that the page is focused on and created for users who might search for information with the keywords that are present in this section.

Eg:

Meta name="keywords" content="Honda, car dealership, Honda cars"

Meta tags have varying levels of relevancy in different search engines. Search Engine like Google doesn't rely on Meta Tags anymore to assign pager ranks, as they feel Meta tags are being misused and stuffed with keywords by webmasters to beat competition.

Although the relevancy of meta tags has vastly decreased and other Search engine Optimization techniques has gained importance, adding meta tags would always give a slight push to your website to race ahead of the competition to land your site on top of search engine indexes.