Hi all,
I know that meta tags are not considered by Google but sometimes i get confused by seeing my competitioners website. Everyone uses META tags(Those who show above me in SERP). So whats the point here. Can anyone explain me advantages and disadvantages in using META tags. Do they help?
Sorry if this question is going on arising in SP. I searched but dint get a solutions.
Forget using meta tags to affect your rankings. The meta description is sometimes used as the snippet of text that describes your page in the SERPs. Just use appropriate keywords and description meta tags and then forget about them.
I was like that before. i dont even add meta name or description for my websites but now a days i felt somewhat. Ok anyways thanks i’ll just put those for sake atleast and see what happens.
For me, I think the Title and Meta Description ae the only meta tags that could help your site but not that much. I said this because I noticed that somehow, google include these two on a search result whenever a query has been done.
The Title isn’t a Meta tag because the browser displays it’s contents and it’s used, along with the description tag to give users enough information about a webpage to make a decision about whether or not to visit it, and still be able to fit 10 results on a SERP return.
Description doesn’t help SEO at all but will help conversions.
Title is VERY important to SEO, it’s where you tell the bot what the page is about.
This is exactly right. You should have your marketing department writing your meta-descriptions. The description isn’t a ranking factor but a sales factor.
Just after the new year I took the decision to remove all meta descriptions from one of my sites, and consolidated by reducing the number of pages overall. Auntie Google has reindexed all the pages and has done a good job with what descriptions it’s using with search results.
It’s still early days yet but my search traffic is up about 20% compared to 12 months ago, and enquiry volumes have nearly doubled.
It’ll be intersting to see if this continues through the rest of the year 
Does that mean you’d done an awful job on your meta descriptions 
In the OP you did mention Google, who have said they no longer factor the keywords meta, but other SEs like yahoo still give keywords some weighting for rankings.
So if having relevant keywords and description meta are useful only for SEs other than google then i still think they’re worth it (really they don’t take long to add to your pages).
META tag description are considered by Google. META tag keywords are considered by some other search engines. you should use these two.
others META tags can generally be omitted unless you know exactly why you are using them for.
Good thinking I dare say a few of them could have been better, but overall what Google is listing with search results contains very similar words and phrases anyway. Also some of my searched for terms are coming up higher in the pecking order, eg page 4 to page 3 and currently it seems these pages are bringing in that bit more traffic.
Who knows how they make the chocolates at the Chocolate Mountain?
I too feel that Meta Tag Description is not considered by Google for SEO purposes. If you write the Meta Tag Description well, it would be promptly displayed by Google for the visitors to see the information. If written well, you would get more visits and conversions too.
Meta Tag Keywords are considered very much by Yahoo.
Meta tags ARE useful, they provide meaningful descriptions of a pages content (which is of as much value as libraries having indexing systems) - their very useful in stuff like DCMI, what search engines ignore are commonly abused META tags like keywords which I’m guessing people like Allison2009 promote out of ignorance.
Not any more! Not since their search results started being provided by Microsoft.
Heh, sorry to jump in here all randomly and so on but, does this mean that we shouldn’t use the meta keywords tag anymore? I currently use the meta keywords and description tag, but if someone can confirm for me regarding the meta keywords tag then I’ll be happy to drop the usage of it from future Web pages as I haven’t seen any documents provided by search engines that promote the usage of the meta keywords tag.
I still use the meta description tag for the likes of Google and other search engines. Whatever SEO experts say, I think I’ll always use the meta description tag regardless because of Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, which encourages the use of the meta description tag.
Thanks for any help you can give!
Andrew Cooper
I would carry on using the keywords and description meta tags for what they were designed for, even if there isn’t any SEO benefit. I tend to use the keywords tag simply for completeness, and because I’m anally retentive. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t
I think Meta-tags are still an important tool for successful search engine marketing. Search engines focus on three primary tags to help them determine the relevance of a website for a particular search phrase. For increase your popularity or site pr for that meta tag is very important.
Meta tags only can show your keywords and intention on that site. Adding important keywords on title tag will help you to increase SERP ranking.
Do you know, I find that really hard to believe… 