Understanding the SEO Benefits of Meta Tags

Out of all the meta tags we've added in this project, the one that can benefit search engine optimization (SEO) is the "description" text meta tag. We set a value for this tag on a few topics. Although some search engines will not use the description value as part of their search rankings, you should still see the text in the search results, helping to give users a better idea of what a topic is all about and encouraging them to click on it.

How to View a Description Meta Tag Value in Search Results

1. Build the First-HTML5-Target file, and open the output.

2. Search for Boxer. Notice the description meta tag text that we added earlier is used for the search result abstract.

   

3. Search for Great Dane. We did not add a description meta tag for this topic, so the search engine (in this case, MadCap Search) just uses text from the first paragraph in the topic. This might be okay, but in some cases it might not be ideal. Adding a description meta tag gives you more control over what displays as overview text for a topic in the search results.