It was once possible to rank well with search engines simply by using meta tags that were stuffed with repeated keywords or the keywords of competitors, however this practice of stuffing and ranking manipulation soon backfired as it was regarded as spamming and unethical black hat SEO. The result is that today, meta tags are all but ignored by the major search engines, most of whom no longer boost the ratings of a website on the basis of its information.

So how is ranking determined? When it comes to ranking, the web page title is rated as the most important component, so place your best keywords here. Regular and well written copy about your business or industry containing relevant keywords is also important. After looking at the title and content of a web page, meta descriptions and keywords will rank next, so it's worthwhile taking the time to reinforce your meta tags. It's also important to remember that some search engines, including Yahoo and MSN still use this information as part of the determining factors for ranking a site and, although the amount of importance may be slight, every little bit helps when it comes to SEO.

How can a well written meta tag help your rankings? Firstly it may increase traffic to your site. One of the valuable features is the ability to give a website owner control, to a degree, over how a web page is described by the search engines. By reinforcing the meta description, it may be possible to influence the decision of a searcher to actually click through to your listing rather than others on the same page. Think how often you have searched for something and clicked on a result based on the linked text of the description. Secondly, each page of your website should have different keywords and descriptions that reflect the content on those pages. This can help when trying to optimize different sections of your site. That exact page may then be displayed in the results directing a visitor to that specific section rather than just the home page.

How do you write an effective meta tag? Limit meta keywords and descriptions to between 150-250 characters as guidelines specify that they will only give value to the first so many characters. Remember that spaces count as characters. The first words are given more value than the last, so make these your best.

These techniques will not skyrocket your site to the top of the search page listings overnight but, combined with a complete SEO campaign and other marketing strategies, will guarantee success in improving your rankings over time.