Hi All Can anybody tell me what role does Meta Tags plays in Search Engine Optimization ? If i don't add any meta tags in my websites what would it happens? Does it add any bad impact on my website? Google is not considering Meta tags as important is it true? Does Yahoo & other SE consider Meat Tags as important? Kindly Help Thanks in Advance
meta tags help your site get identified by search engines... without it, your site will not get indexed..
Meta tags can do anything from tell browsers what keywords to really look for on your site to who is the author of the site to the description of your site. You know when you search for a website on google and the description of the website is all bits and pieces of random parts from a websites? Well, that generally means that the site creator did not code a meta description for the site. So meta tags can help with getting you indexed better, help you with copywright situations, helping people searching for specific keywords to know what is your site about before they view it, and you can also tell the search engine crawlers to not index your site and not follow the links on your website. All that true meta tags. I myself love meta tags and I try to always use them, no matter what the site. Just think about it. If typing in a few meta tags could help you in the SERPS why not do it? It couldn't hurt.
Really, the one meta tag you need to use is the meta description; the keywords meta tag due to abuse plays little to no value in search algorithms across the board. Before some "I just started web designing" moron gets on... title tags are not a meta element. You'll find that you should make sure your meta description is a short summary of the content found on that specific web page; the title tag for the head element should be a short descriptive title of the web page itself. Note: These two items are what appear in search results to people searching
Yes u r right, search engines will not affect even though meta tags not used. But, u must have to use the title. And the description, it will take automatically from dmoz (if u r submitted to dmoz) else from ur content. Meta tags are for "explain about ur site to search engines". They are helpful in getting ur site in SERP. But it will not affect to index or to improve the pagerank.
From a Web page standpoint there are the primary 3 that everyone refers to: <title> Mandatory - Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask META Desc - Should have - MSN, and Ask META Desc - Might Need - Google, Yahoo META Keyword - Not needed - Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask All the others - Nice to have but not needed
It is important also to use a title tag so google and other search engines can place your site in the right category.
I recently had a interview with other coy where they mentioned that (meta tags are not important) i dunno when they do not know any thing about SEO why do they says so?
They are more than a bit confused. Also, as ssandecki kindly points out, your title is a page attribute NOT A META TAG. If I had a nickel for everytime I tried to explain that to someone, I would be rich. I also agree with Steve(is it?) that the description is really the only thing you absolutely have to address in terms of meta tags. It serves as an indicator as to what is on the actual page.
My site is not listed in DMOZ and there is no actual content on the site. So meta tags are important . Especially description tag, i have seen if my make changes to my description then my rankings are affected. So this shows that meta tags not all but few are very important for SE.
Meta tag is like life your site in search engine. if your site have not meta tag means your site is dead. search engine looks first your meta tag during crawl. without meta tag your site can't rank or don't get possion in search engine.