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Meta Tags
The Meta Tags feature is the Drupal module called "Nodewords". This is a very powerful module for search engine optimization (SEO). It allows the site administrator to verify their web site ownership to web site management tools offered by Google, Yahoo and Bing, as well as customize meta tags like descriptions and keywords. Combined with the XML sitemap module, the admin has a very powerful SEO combination.
Meta Tags is available only in the advanced package.
To enable the meta tags module, you must browse to "Administer > Site building > Modules". From there scroll down to the "Meta Tags" group and check all five checkboxes. This module has no external dependencies, so the module is completely self supporting.
From there go to "Administer > User management > Permissions" and give the appropriate roles access to manage and tags. When doing so, remember, the permissions use the name "nodewords" not meta tags.
Configuring and Default Values
After permissions are set up, have a permitted administrator go to "Administer > Content management > Meta tags" defaults to the "setting" page of the configuration. This is for entering the basic configuration info for the modules. For common search engine optimization tactics be most concerned with the verification code meta tags and the description and keyword tags. Most of the other options can be left at default, but feel to play around at will.
Clicking the "Default and specific meta tags" button will bring you to a page that allows you to edit meta information for specific pages. What is entered on the default values page will be what shows up in the respective meta tags if no page-specific value is entered (which will be explained in a minute).
If you enable the verification code tags in the settings page, you can click on the "Front page" button and enter your verification keys for Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer. This will help you verify ownership of the site with these search engines and register the site in their tools.
Within this section you can also set up special meta tags for error pages and other different page types that you may want to take special care of.
Page/Content Specific Values
What you have done above is set up how Meta Tags behaves, and what the default, global values for your web sites meta tags. However, this is not the end of the game. Very often, with the major search engines they do not want to see duplicated content within meta description and keywords tags. Though, obviously tags such as copyright and things like that will naturally be the same.
When you create a new piece of content, page, book, book page or any other node of content, content authors that have the permissions will be allowed to set customized meta tags specifically for that page, allowing powerful search engine optimization capabilities. So when you create a new node of content, be aware of this and create your meta tags with care.