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Website Design Essentials
Meta Tags and Keywords Explained


Pixelwave Web Design prides itself on its friendly helpful nature.
I understand that many of the terms used by website design professionals are alien and difficult to understand. These 'Essential' articles explain some of the basic terminology you may hear within the world of website design.

You may have heard web-designers or website owners mention words such as 'meta tags' or 'keywords' and waffle on about their importance... But what are they, and why are they important to you? This article explains the basics.

What is a Meta Tag?

A Meta Tag is simply a piece of information hidden within the coding of your web-page that contains information about the page itself. There are many different meta tags, each containing information about a particular aspect of a page. Typical information contained within the meta tags are:

  • The coding language used to write your web page
  • The language the content is written in
  • The author of the page
  • An abstract of the information contained within the page
  • Keywords contained within the page
  • A description of the page

Meta tags do not affect the display of your web page but are used by the software or hardware your visitors use to view your website. Meta tags are used in this way to enable the software to display your page correctly.

What are Keywords?

The 'Keywords' and 'Description' meta-tags are particularly important due to the fact that search engines use them to catalogue the information contained within your web-pages. This means that inserting the correct keywords into your meta-tags can make a big difference to your ranking within search engine results.

Getting the right number of keywords, a balance between specific and more generalised terms and the keyword density within the actual text of your web-pages is an essential part of the design process. As your site develops it may be necessary to 'tweak' your keywords as part of your Search Engine Optimisation.

Here at Pixelwave Design I make sure all web pages I build have suitable meta-tags. I will discuss which keywords will be the most appropriate for your site during the initial planning stages of your website. Continued analysis and improvement of your keyword selections is carried out as part of my SEO service.