Is Meta Tags Really Important?

[terrance05]

Hello

I just wanted to ask a real important question... I am no where near a search engine optimization specialist...lol, But in some case I have found that meta tags are really not that important. Let me elaborate. If you site is filled with useful content and you only have a title tag which emphasizes your keyword, then the search engines crawl your sites content and sometimes gives you a higher ranking. Especially if you keywords or description is placed more to the top where it can be crawled and viewed correctly as a listing.

I reveiwed some sites with properly used meta tags that had lower rankings, and sites with nothing but a title tag and had a top listing.. why is that? Therefore my site is filled with content the can be viewed correctly as a listing since I deleted my meta tags and just kept the title tag. I know keywords and descriptions are very important because thats how people find you, but if it is not correctly optimized then they wont find you?

Please give me some feedback on this, I would like to hear from you professionals that know more about this than I do

Terrance

[David Wallace]

The only important meta tag is the meta description tag. Google doesn't pay to much attention to it but the last I checked, Yahoo uses the meta description tag (if you have one) to form the description that appears in the SERPs.

They are not that difficult to develop so there is no reason why you shouldn't have unique meta description tags for each page.

The only other meta tag that has any use is the keyword meta tag and its use is very, very minimal to say the least. I still develop one for a site and then repeat it throughout each page. Yahoo has stated that they index it but I think very little emphasis is placed on it.

[terrance05]

Thanks David

I read over your reply and got some insight to what you were saying. For some reason I came across the same insight with yahoo... Yahoo doesn't necessarily have strict rules on search engine placement with meta tags as other search engines do...

I realize the importance of search engine traffic, because 80% to 90% of you traffic can come from search engines, and that is a lot better conversion of quality visitors than you can get with other free traffic exchanges etc.

My site is 2 months new but it is actually performing better than I thought producing a little income for me, but what I am trying to focus on is getting more content and upping my search engine ranking. There is still alot of improving to be done to my site and I make sure I am using only tested and proven content that helped me and that others can benefit from.

This is a very good topic, I like to hear from everyone interested..

Thanks alot for your reply David

Terrance..

[JGould]

Along the same lines, I have read that meta tags are only effective if they include text that is included on the page that they are associated with. Does anyone know if this is true, or if it matters much.

[polarmate]

My experience shows me that Google does pay attention to the description meta tag. When I check the SERPs for my keyword phrases, Google shows the description meta tag regardless of whether the keyword phrase is present in the main content of the page. The other instance when Google has been known to show the meta tag is when the site is developed using flash and the keyword phrase exists in the description meta tag.

With Yahoo, I am stuck with rather poor snippets that come from the descriptions the editors decided to use for my sites.

It's good practice to write targeted description and keyword tags. Some directories use these tags. Or at least review them.

I have read that meta tags are only effective if they include text that is included on the page that they are associated with. Does anyone know if this is true, or if it matters much.

I'd say the rule of thumb would be to write a succinct description of what your page is about. Use your keyword phrases but don't overdo it. The description tag should be a natural sentence in English (or any other language that your site is in) that reads well instead of sounding like a keyword stuffed sentence.

[terrance05]

Hello Everyone

I did a in depth research with meta tags yesterday and learned a lot more about the search engine optimization and placement. Yes meta tags are important when it precisely explains the main content of your website in a simple sentence using your main keyword phrases without over stuffing your meta tags. The thing is try to make your meta tag look as professional as you can get it while using your keyword phrases.

I optimized my tags using http://www.anybrowser.com/MetaTagGenerator.html which has helped my ranking... I submitted my website to searchsight.com which is a 1 day quick inclusion and I ended up on the second page rank #15 for the keyword "Free internet marketing resource" which is not a widely used keyword that I know of but it describes my websites content.

Heres a description of my meta tags, I found using all the meta name resources that tells search engine spiders what to do gets a better ranking?

<html>
<head>
<title>InternetMarketing.co.nr - Free internet marketing resource..</title>
<meta name="resource-type" content="document">
<meta name="generator" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="14">
<meta name="classification" content="Advertising and Marketing">
<meta name="description" content="A Free internet marketing resource site, focusing on webmaster marketing, web site promotion, small business tips and internet marketing tips.">
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
<meta name="keywords" content="free webmaster resource site, webmaster resource, free internet marketing resource, web site promotion, small business tips, small business tip, marketing tips, internet marketing tips, website promotion, business ideas, website ideas, advertising.">
<meta name="robots" content="ALL">
<meta name="distribution" content="Global">
<meta name="rating" content="General">
<meta name="copyright" content="http://www.internetmarketing.co.nr">
<meta name="author" content="Terrance Charles">
<meta http-equiv="reply-to" content="[email protected]">
<meta name="language" content="English">
<meta name="doc-type" content="Web Page">
<meta name="doc-class" content="Published">
<meta name="doc-rights" content="Public">
<script language='JavaScript'>
</head>

I created this using http://www.anybrowser.com/MetaTagGenerator.html and it boosted my ranking..

Terrance..

[David Wallace]

95% of those tags are useless.

The only ones you really need are:

<title></title>
<meta name="description" content="">
<meta name="keywords" content="">

The rest are just a waste of space in my opinion and experience.

[terrance05]

Thanks for your advice David

But what about the other tags that explain when the search engine spider should revisit your site..like say 14 days... and the other tags that gives classification to the spiders on what to do, like what kind of content is being used, copyright material, language etc. Because for every search engine there is a different criteria your site needs to have and if you have all those, then you have a better chance of being included in most search engines right?

Though I truly understand the only needed tags are your - title - description - keywords... but some engines wont include your site becuase it does not have the right classification in the tags...

[David Wallace]

The major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN & Teoma) pay no attention to those tags from my experience. You definately are not going to influence when they revisit your site as they will do that on their own time frame.

[TechEvangelist]

David is right. Terrance, that is a great collection of obsolete and useless meta tags. You could NEVER boost your rankings by adding all those meta tags. It's not possible. I tend to think that you posted them intentionally to get a response or another opinion.

Most meta tags had a useful purpose at one time, but were so widely abused by site owners that the search engines no longer pay attention to them. meta tags were widely used by search engines back in the days when search engine algorithms were very simple and crude. Meta tags were used to provide search engines with the information they needed to help them to list a site.

There was a time when the keywords meta tag was the main source for keywords to represent a site, but site owners soon learned that they could stuff them with unrelated words to draw more traffic. I think it was about 1996 or 1997 when the most common word found in the keywords meta tag was "sex".

There are a few other meta tags that serve a purpose, such as the imagetoolbar tag that turns off the image toolbar in Internet Explorer, but this won't boost your search engine rankings. It's just there for people who get annoyed by the image toolbar that displays when you do a rollover on images.

<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="false">

The best policy for meta tag use is to not use one unless it serves a clear purpose. Useless meta tags are just additional overhead that no site needs.