Difference between Meta Keyword and Meta Description

Key Difference: Meta Keyword tags are keywords that are placed in the html code to place emphasis on specific words in the webpage. Meta Description tag is a small summary or description of what the webpage holds.

Meta keyword and meta description are tags that are part of a larger ‘meta tags’ group. These tags provide the meta data for a webpage and highly useful for search engine optimization. Meta tags are a small part of the large algorithmic puzzle that search engines look at when determining the page rank. In order to understand what meta keyword tags and meta description tags are and do, we must first understand meta tags in general.

Meta tags are official data tags that are between the open and the closing head tags in the html code of a webpage. The meta tags tell browsers and other web services specific information regarding the page.

Meta Keyword tag are keywords that are placed in the html code to place emphasis on specific words in the webpage. For example: a webpage talking about inspirational quotes can add keywords such as inspiration and quotes to place more emphasis on that particular word so that it comes up faster in searches. The Keyword attribute made popular in 1995 by search engines such as Infoseek and AltaVista. However, because of many web page creators adding way to many keywords, many search engines have stopped taking keywords into account when searching web pages.

Meta Description tag is a small summary or description of what the webpage holds. If a web page has a whole paper on a certain topic, a summary of that paper would be added to the meta description tag. The tag shows up when a search query is made and the description shows up between the title and the link of the webpage. The description tag is a useful way to generate interest in the web page. Good descriptions can result in the public accessing the webpage and an ineffective one will turn them away. In case of many search engines, if a description tag is left empty, the search engine will generate one for the web page using content from the actual page. Descriptions can help with clicks and site rating. There is no specific length that is given by the W3C, but most search engines recommend keeping the length to 155 characters or less.

Comparison between Meta Keyword and Meta Description:

	Meta Keyword	Meta Description
Definition	Meta Keyword tag are keywords that are placed in the html code to place emphasis on specific words in the webpage.	Meta Description tag is a small summary or description of what the webpage holds.
Use	To promote specific keywords in a webpage that may be searched more often	Summary of the webpage to provide a synopsis of what the webpage might hold
Popularity	Made popular in 1995	Made popular in the late 1990s
Place in html code in webpage	Placed in the header tag	Placed in the header tag
Search Engines	Supported still by Bing, but mostly obsolete	Hugely supported by all search engines including Google and Bing.
Size	Short, four to five keywords	No specific length given but most web engines prefer 155 characters or less.