What are meta tags, and how do you write them?

What are meta tags?

Meta tags are snippets of text in HTML that describe a page's overall content, but are not displayed directly on the website — only in the page's source code. Meta tags are used by search engines, where they appear in search results and play a role in a page's ranking, as meta tags help search engines understand the page's content.

Meta tags consist of both a title, called a title tag, and a description, known as a meta description.

This is how you see the page's meta tags in the source code

And this is how meta tags appear in search results (here Google)

How do you write (good) meta tags?

Meta tags serve two purposes:

To help search engines understand your page's content and thereby achieve good rankings in search results for relevant queries.
To attract as many visitors as possible and generate the highest possible CTR/click-through rate.

In other words: to drive as many visitors as possible to your website.

You write good meta tags — including descriptions and titles — that achieve exactly this. Among other things, by conducting a keyword analysis, including selected keywords, and writing engaging, concrete and relevant copy.