No and site content is very important. You don't need any meta tags at all, just the title element which is also very important. Most people put in meta tags because they are afraid to leave them out but that's ok too. - Michael
Site Content is important . SEs love fresh and unique content . So , keep updating and avoid duplicate content .
Content is more important for sure but there are some search engines that use the description and the keywords tags for their ranking so its a good idea to have them.
Content is more important when it comes to ranking. But meta description tags is use by search engine to display your site description in search engine results.
The meta description tag is the second most important element after the page title. It stops your site being listed as supplemental and produces the snippet in the search results.
If the description tag stopped pages going supplemental then why do you have pages in the supplemental from the site in your sig. Like this one for example mad4mobilephones.com/nokia-6030/ - it and many others pages that are supplemental have description tags. Also you don't need a description tag to have a snippet, and having a description tag doesn't guarantee it will appear as the snippet either. - Michael
I didn't say it stopped all pages being supplemental, it just helps. Whilst you don't need a description to have a snippet its pretty stupid to rely on Google to write the snippet for you. Thats like creating an Adwords campaign and letting google write the ad text.
You did actually "It stops your site being listed as supplemental". But you do rely on Google to write the snippet for you. Google chooses the snippet based on the search term if it can. For example: This site digitalpoint, the home page description tag is "Offering business software packages and free online tools." However search for Discounted VeriSign Payflow and the snippet for the digitalpoint home page is "Wednesday, September 12 Discounted VeriSign Payflow Pro ... The Payflow Pro payment gateway allows you to process credit cards and/or ACH transactions with ..." and the search terms or their synonyms emboldend. Nothing to do with description tag. - Michael
For those unaware, the meta keyword tag is a way to insert text into an HTML page that is not visible when the page is viewed through a browser. Some search engines have read the content of the tag and associated the words within it along with the page's regular body copy. The first major crawler-based search engines to use the meta keywords tag were Infoseek and AltaVista. It's unclear which one provided support first, but both were offering it in early 1996. When Inktomi launched in mid-1996 through the HotBot search engine, it also provided support for the tag. Lycos did the same in mid-1997, taking support up to four out of the seven major crawlers at the time (Excite, WebCrawler and Northern Light did not provide support). The ascendancy of the tag did not last after 1997. Experience with the tag has showed it to be a spam magnet. Some web site owners would insert misleading words about their pages or use excessive repetition of words in hopes of tricking the crawlers about relevancy. For this reason, Excite (which also owned WebCrawler) resisted added support. Lycos quietly dropped its support of the tag in 1998, and newer search engines such as Google and FAST never added support at all. After Infoseek (Go.com) closed in 2000, the meta keywords tag was left with only two major supporters: AltaVista and Inktomi. Now Inktomi remains the only one, with AltaVista having dropped its support in July, the company says. "In the past we have indexed the meta keywords tag but have found that the high incidence of keyword repetition and spam made it an unreliable indication of site content and quality. We do continue to look at this issue, and may re-include them if the perceived quality improves over time," said Jon Glick, AltaVista's director of internet search. As for Inktomi, the search engine has no immediate plans to follow AltaVista'lead: "The meta keywords value is just one of many factors in our ranking equation, and we've never given too much weight to it. That said, we will continue to use it as long as our relevance modeling shows that it adds value," said Ken Norton, director of product marketing for Inktomi'web search division. I'm certainly not crying over the decline of the meta keywords tag. It's always been a confusing issue for site owners. Should I use commas between words in the tag or not? How many times can I repeat a word on the page without getting banned? If I don't list a term in the tag, does that mean my page won't show up? Those are common questions consistently raised over the years and represent time wasted worrying about a page element that a minority of crawlers supported -- and for those that did, an element that was assigned little if any ranking boost. Indeed, my advice about the meta keywords tag for ages has been simple. For those running large web sites or short on time, don't worry about it. The stress and time involved in trying to craft a tag was not worth it, in terms of the minor benefit it might bring. It is far more important for site owners to instead concentrate on creating good title tags for their pages, a key page element that has consistently shown it can help with ranking across all major crawlers. Now I can make my advice about the meta keywords tag even easier. Just don't use the tag at all! Obviously, if you personally find it or believe it to be useful, keep doing so. But I suspect it's just a waste of time, for most people
I've read that meta tags helps Adsense find relevant ads, but I'm not sure how true that is. I do know as a fact that my meta description tags have been showing in google search results, they are invaluable!! They also get the free 'bold' feature if the exact keyword match is within them
This is a misleading post. Meta tag description is not a necessity but is something that can help give you an edge in stiff competition. Depending on your site content, it may or may not play an important role. However, I would never recommend it not having any tags at all. Meta tag description is used by Google to show your site in the results. If you are targetting a specific keyword for your page then it would help the user get more details about your site. It is like a marketting slogan that would be shown on G results. So use it wisely. It is NOT a waste of time to use meta tags but a fruitful investment which would go long way!
site content is the most important thing, but then if there is not sufficient content available, then perhaps the meta tags will come into play. still i always consider the keywords and descreption, as these meta tags are still very important!
From what stuff I read online I get mixed opinions on using meta tags for search engines. Personally, I use them anyways. They can only work to your advantage; I doubt that would ever hurt you, unless you use the wrong ones. Moral of the story: use them anyways!
There are some search engines that still use meta tags, so it might be good to fill them in but keyword-rich content and the amount and quality of backlinks is WAY MORE important
Updated and latest data is vital to any site. Therefore, keep updated your site with fresh content. If you want to use meta tags, then you can also use.