Typically when people refer to meta tags they are referring to keywords placed in the head section of a web page. These tags are not visible to visitors to the web page. They are used to provide information about a website so that search engines can categorize and describe them correctly. 

In the mid to late 1990’s meta tags were utilized by search engines to help determine website ranking, which helped determine website traffic. However, today meta tags are not considered to be an important aspect of search engine optimization.