We get asked repeatedly about adding "meta tags" to websites, usually the "keywords" meta tag.
Let's deal with the myth first. Meta tags don't help your search results in Google. Period, stop, done, over and out.
All the major search engines stopped looking at the keyword tag in 1997, when the "adult" website industry started stuffing innocuous but popular search phrases into their website meta tag keywords, to hijack searches.
The only meta tag that Google looks at that we care about today is the description tag.
How is the description tag used? Google will randomly select snippets of text from your web page and display that as the text in their search results.
If you add a description tag, then Google will throw that description into the mix, along with whatever random snippets it finds on your page.
That's all. It won't boost your ranking at all.
According to Google's Matt Cutts, "Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking."
So, meta tag keywords? Don't waste your time.
Meta tag description? As a low-priority task, put some creative and compelling text there, and it will show up once in a while in Google's results.
To add text to the description meta tag (or the keywords tag, if you really want to cover all bases), just click on "Add meta data to Web Page" link in your Online Business Partner page editor.
Then, type the text you want to be occasionally used by Google when it displays your page in search results, and click "Publish". You are done.
(If you're not using our Online Business Partner, check with your webmaster, who will be able to revise your site to add a description tag.)
This won't get you higher up on Google, but it will give you a chance to provide one more bit of compelling text, so when people see it, they won't be able to resist clicking on your link in Google!
(Of course, don't fib. Google can get pretty cranky when you try to trick them!)
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