Nov 27th, 2007 by admin 16,971 Views
Back in the early 90s, in the pioneering time of Search Engines Optimization meta-tags were the most importance factor when it came about optimizing a page. At that time it was enough to spam your title, description and keywords meta-tags with tons of keywords and rank on top of search engines for most of them. However, as the time passed, search engines algorithm evolved and more and more factors started to be taken in consideration so the importance of the meta-tags constantly dropped over time.
The only one meta-tag that remained very important over the time is the title tag (<title>Title</title>). In fact it is not a meta-tag, but a simple HTML tag, but there are quite a lot of people that consider it as a meta-tag so I mentioned it too. It is important not only for the SEO value it carries (which is quite high), but also for the fact that it appears on SERPS and is the most important factor that affects the CTR ration. When writing titles for your pages you should have a few things in mind: it should be user friendly (so people will actually click it and come to your site), it should include the keywords (so it helps the rankings) and it shouldn’t be too long. An example of good title for a library called “Book Lovers” and located in Boston would be: “Book Lovers – best library in Boston” or “Book Lovers – your favorite Boston library”.
The description meta-tag (<meta name=”description” content=”A one sentence description goes here.”>) is the second most important meta-tag. Again it not only cares some SEO value, but it also appears on SERPS and affects drastically the CTR. Considering that it’s most important role is to increase the CTR and not to carry SEO value I highly recommend you to write it for visitors and not for search engines. If you mention your main keyword it’s enough from a pure SEO perspective. An example of good description for the same Boston library would be: “Book Lovers is one of Boston’s best libraries; we aim to be the first library where you can find the newest book edition.”
The keywords meta-tag (<meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3”>) carries nowadays only a minimal SEO value and a lot of SEO experts even ignore it. However, if you’re like me, someone who considers that every bit counts you may want to add it to your site. However be careful to not spam it – use only 3-4 keywords and be sure that those keywords also exist in the page’s text. To continue with our previous example some good keywords would be: “Book Lovers”, “library”, “Boston”.
Any other meta-tag carries no SEO value anymore and using them will only make your pages heavier; so I highly recommend you to stick only with title, description and keywords meta-tags. If you want you can even use only the title meta-tag for your inner page (there are a lot of SEO experts that do so). But, under no circumstances, don’t copy the same title, description and keywords on all your pages because this may lead to a penalty; and I’m sure that this is the last thing you want to happen to your site.
it is important to have unique meta tags for each page. thanks for the tips, good article
Over the years as a private SEO consultant, i have seen many poorly SEO designed business websites. I agreed on the need for a good written title and meta description in a webpage, addition point that everyone must take note : Place your TITLE tag after the HEAD tag and the Meta Description next in line. This is of SEO value, ensure that the spiders read your title first, followed by the description. In this way, we can guide the spiders to have a better understanding of your web content.
First of all, hi admin long time no post…. where have you been?
About the post, I never consider meta tags that important however I do agree with the title tag… very very important. I’ve been playing with my Title tag for the last couple of months and i see that my CTR is increasing due to the ‘right’ title people will visit your site/page.
I’m happy that you’re posting article back, hope to see more killing and informative post. Thanks.
[…] As a search engine optimizer and internet marketer it is always helpful to be reminded of the basics while staying on top of new trends in web technology development. What was in-style internet marketing in the 90’s does not apply to the social media optimization era of today as we realign for Meta-tags in the 21st century. […]
Well, Title and Description are always useful and main under the head tags but I don’t think keywords has any importance as Google will not read it stated by Matt Cutts, a Google Guy.
SEO India, I understand and agreed on the fact that Google has since ceased the use of meta keywords. But as a SEO consultant, we must always educate our clients that Google is not the only search engine that we are optimizing for. There are Yahoo!, MSN and other important engines out there too. For what i know MSN and Yahoo! is still using meta keywords with little significance. But bear in mind there are other engines around and we don’t just forget about them
Well, admin i have not seen you for quite a while… You might need to update on this SEO blog. I still visit it frequently and i hope you will not forget about your blogging. I understand that you are busy building up your directory business, but do not forget us…
Updated : Meta tags are not of much importance to Google. Do not spend too much time on your meta tags. Play around with your title meta to get maximum result.
For the little bit of time it takes to put a few keywords in the meta tag, just do it. There are search engines out there other than Google.. People forget about that..
Decent summary although I would disagree with you that the Meta description doesn’t have much SEO value. Additionally, you might wanna mention the importance of making sure these fields are unique (Page Title and Desciption) from page to page. Google does not use the keyword field but MSN and Yahoo do and it is worth doing for that reason. You can use more than 5 keywords in that field as long as each phrase is unique.
i do agree that the Title tag is the most important among those metas but still, using the them (meta desc, meta keywords) can still give you some help (though they have been devalued by Google)
Hey, no new posts for ages!! I used to enjoy lurking here
Have you mothballed the site?
Tittle tag - most important tags.
Meta tagi w tytule sa najwazniejsze. Keywords owszem, ale nie az tak. ąle najbardziej linki z wysokiego page ranku.
Thats a great article, I noticed that google pays much less attention on keyword meta tags and your article just confirmed it, thank you
The title tag and the description tag plays a vital role in determining SERP rankings. As we noticed that most of the indexed pages are collected based on the keywords located in the title and description…
The keyword meta tag should have “the” keyword for “that” page in it. The overuse of the tag has dropped it’s importance but it is still relevant to the describing of the page. Even the almighty Google will notice if there is only one keyword in the tag. Pick the most relevant keyword for that page and use it.
In my tests using a single word vs. several keywords did show slight differences in results, the better being towards the single word or phrase.
Even though the difference was quite small, a little edge is all you need in some niches to hit first page vs. second page.
Brian Ankner
Webmaster, SEOmaster, Published Author
Every little bit counts. especially for flash content
Everything count.. meta tags and title.. but backlinks are the main factor
Very good points made by all. Title tag plays a major role in search rankings.
Title tag is definitely very important as far as SERP results go.
Hello everybody, just want to say Hello from Indonesia
I have read serveral times about the importance of meta tags, but I don’t know. I think the description tag is the most importance. Another tags are not that special
Good stuff. I need to change a bunch of meta tags on one site as I have been using the same tag across all pages.
Great article, I have learned alot
In my opinion they do not make any difference…
Thanks
I would not bother with meta tags but since it only takes a minute to implement them… Why not?