Meta tags are tags inserted in the head portion of your HTML code. There are two kinds of meta tags you need to differentiate between. One is the meta keyword tag and the other, the meta description tag.
This is an example of the keyword meta tag:
<META name=“keywords” content=“keyword1, keyword2, keyword3”>
This is an example of the description meta tag:
<META name=“description” content=“A brief description of your web page contents”>
The meta keyword tag has been abused so much in the past that it’s effectiveness in the search engines has dropped. In many cases, you don’t even have to bother creating this tag. Excessive meta keyword stuffing in the late 90s helped many sites show up in the top 10 results but this is no longer the case because it is ignored in many cases.
You may still use it to cover all the bases for keywords you weren’t able to include in your visible copy. These could be synonyms, misspellings, different spellings (eg. customize vs. customise) and variations of your keywords (eg. payroll vs. pay roll). Be careful not to stuff it or repeat keywords as this is seen as search engine spam.
The meta description tag, however, is still used. While the value isn’t as great as a title tag, it is still a useful part of describing a site’s contents. Certain search engines like Teoma still use the description tag to describe the site in its search results. Search engines like Google will create their own description of your site based on contents found by its bot.