In Talian you could temporarily add the entire Google Verification Meta Tag as a Text widget via Appearance >> Widgets and it should work. Text widgets aren’t designed for meta tags, but add it and see if it works, when it’s activated delete the text widget.

If it doesn’t work edit the Talian header.php file and add the entire meta tag above the body tag. After you’ve verified remove the meta tag (don’t need to keep it after verification).

David

The title element (the title of a page) isn’t a tag, it isn’t a meta tag (amateur SEO’s have confused the webmaster community by calling it the title tag, it’s not a flipping tag, it’s an element).

The title element is probably the most important SEO factor on a page.

Back to actual meta tags which have zero ranking value in Google.

This is not saying some meta tags have no value or use, but they will not result in a page that’s say ranked number 5 for a search result becoming number 4 for that search result. They have no SEO RANKING value.

All those hours spent crafting meta keywords tags is a complete and utter waste of time when it comes to Google rankings. Google ignores the meta keywords tag. Minor search engines might take it into account, but I personally don’t optimise for minor search engines, the time wasted creating keywords meta tags could be spent creating a new article that will generate traffic from Google, Bing, Yahoo… not Uncle Bob’s search engine that gets no traffic.

Indexing (ie with an XML sitemap) is not the same as ranking and an XML sitemap isn’t a meta tag.

The Google verification meta tag is nothing but a way for Google webmaster tools account to confirm you own the site you want to track. That’s all it does, once confirmed you can delete that meta tag, same for Bing verification and Yahoo site explorer verification.

There are useful meta tags like the noodp one that if you are having problems with a site that’s using the title from the Open Directory (usually not a very user friendly title) and you think it’s costing you click through from Google SERPs (if it reads bad, less clicks) use that to stop Google using it. Won’t increase SERPs though (no SEO ranking value).

There are other meta tags that are downright SEO damaging like noindex and nofollow both of which waste link benefit/PR.

David

Is there a way to see how the pages that have been indexed are ranked without having to type it in at Google and then start searching.

I disagree, especially for local search marketing. If you are a local business specializing in say the Louisville, KY area. Adding the term Louisville to your title and meta descrip will help smaller businesses gain an advantage in search engine rankings where they may have been pushed out by larger companies that don’t focus just on local areas.