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Meta tags - description and keywords
Whilst increasingly they are being dropped from the search algorithms in response to widespread abuse, such as putting in keywords that are irrelevant to the site/section, some search engines still use description and keyword tags, so it is still best practice to include them on all (or at least some) pages. The reason being that search engines that do not read these tags will just ignore them, creating no ill effect, hence it is best to include them for the ones that do.
Examples:
<meta name="description" content="Discount travel with a professional touch is the promise of Discount Travel Company Ltd, with exceptionally low-cost flights to all European destinations">
<meta name="keywords" content="discount, travel, cheap, flights, Europe, European destinations, low-cost, air, fares, vacation, business, bargain, routes">
Best practice:
The "description" content should provide a clear and concise description of the page and/or its content and/or purpose as it would be expected to appear in a search engine or other listing
The "keywords" content should provide a list of relevant keywords in approximate order of importance, comma delineated. Keywords that appear in close proximity are more likely to influence a search for a key phrase that includes them, but it should not be necessary to repeat words for endless permutations of word combinations in key phrases.
As with the <title> tag, the "description" and "keywords" content should reflect the content of the page, not the site, ie the same content should not be repeated on every page throughout the site.
As with the <title> tag, the "description" and "keywords" content should place emphasis on the most important words and phrases by listing them first.
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