What Meta informations should I use ?

Question

Hi,

I see a lot of different point of views on internet concerning meta tags. I've been using them for a while, but I'm now wondering if I've been doing it using the current best practices.

I know that the description is the most important one...

<meta name="description" content="This is not a website" />

But what about other meta tag? Should I even use something else than the description tag? For instance, some say that using keyword is bad practice now because some website overused them and it could lead to lead the website in the spam folder of the search engine.

Lastly, what is the best practice when writing a description meta tag ? Using my personal example, right now I have a website referencing various songs. Should I do :

<meta name="description" content="MyWebsite - Here, there are songs" />

or more something like this on each different page :

<meta name="description" content="Song Title X, Artist Y" />

or :

<meta name="description" content="MyWebsite - Here, there are songs | Song Title X, Artist Y" />

or any combination of the previous one... or something else?

Thanks !

Answer 1

Each page should have its own meta description, the description is used to display data about the page once its on the search results screen

Answer 2

I don't know why I received a negative vote on my comment, but let me elaborate, in hopes that the vote will be reversed.

The meta tag keywords is an important tags for search engines. In the case of a music site you might want to add something like the following. Then as search engines are exploring your site, they will know what words you specifically want your site to be associated with.

Here's an example: <meta name="keywords" content="Rock, Jazz, Bluegrass, Blues, Bass, Guitar, 60s, 70s" />

Answer 3

Here's a list of metatags supported by Google's crawler:

Meta tags - Webmasters/Site owners Help

Answer 4

I do not thik all of your description meta tags. Let me elaborate on.

First one, It is good to read(as you know those descriptions will be presented searching), yet it is not so precise! Not good to your SEO.

Second one, Good to SEO, not to readers.

Third one, better than the first two, yet you need polish them.

P.S you can add more words to it.