Coupled with the "meta keywords" tag, the "meta description" tag is located at the top of your page within the <HEAD></HEAD> tags. While this tag now carries a reduced weight (significance) than at previous points in the past, it does still get used frequently by some major search engines, including AllTheWeb (FAST Search). Google has also been known to use this tag on occasion to rank websites, although Google pays very little attention to it.
This tag gives you the opportunity to put forward a brief description of the contents of the webpage. The recommended length for this tag is 128 characters maximum (including spaces) for cross-engine compliance, although you may wish to extend its length to a 200 character maximum, which is permissible so long as the tag is not "stuffed" with keywords and the description is an accurate reflection of the contents of the webpage.
This tag can be seen on the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) and if worded correctly may significantly increase the quantity of traffic driven to your website.
Here is an example of an optimized meta description tag and where it is found in an HTML file:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Search Engine Submission & Optimization Services[/TITLE>
<meta name="description" content="Providing professional search engine submission and promotion services. Let us increase your traffic level.">
<meta name="keywords" content="search, engine, submission, optimize, optimise, promote">
...... The rest of your HTML code ......
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