Hi. I am an SEO newbie and I've tried searching through the threads and posts in this forum to find answers to my question but I haven't gotten a good, solid answer yet so I'll just ask my question even if I think it might have been asked before. I'm having second thoughts about adding general meta tags and post specific meta tags on my blog (the one in my signature). When I researched about meta tags (description and keywords) I discovered that SEO experts are actually divided on the issue. Some say that these meta tags are no longer as relevant and useful as before and that I will only be wasting my time creating them. Only some search engine robots continue to refer to these tags. I do have a couple of local friends who work in SEO and still continue to use meta tags. What is your opinion about this? Should meta tags still be used?
Pretty sure meta keywords are almost useless these days (at least with Google) from people abusing them so much in the past.
Thanks Rahan. I read too that Google pretty much ignores them now. I'm planning to experiment on my new blog and not use meta tags. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Without goin' towards complexities, no.. they are not! Meta keywords plays a very little role, this is a great sample of an obsolete strategies in SEO.
Thank you so much JessieJames and Michaelr. Your additional inputs have more or less solidified my resolve not to waste time on them. No one has come out so far to give a different view.
I don't remember where I read it or I would link you, but I read that all but one search engine ignore meta tags now. I don't remember which search engine still crawls them which is an indicator of the lack of importance of that search engine. You may gain a slight boost from an obscure search engine out there, but I find it not worth the time. I run two blogs and a few blogger sites. I get very good search rankings without meta tags. Google "Gordon Ramsay Fillet of Steak with Mushroom Gratin" and you'll see that a post I wrote just yesterday, with no meta tags is already at number 2 on google. You can take gordon ramsay out and just google the rest of the term and I'm number 4. Various combinations and I'm still on the first page with no meta data. In my oppinion the tags are dead. Do still use meta descriptions though as google will list your site description based on this info. You don't need to do meta descriptions on every post though, just the main page.
Meta keywords are useless for the major search enginee but usefull for the small search engine. Meta keywords also useless in term of competitor analysis because meta keywords help your competitor to find which keywords are you targeting.
Thank you for your comprehensive response longblog and for your additional input vplumbing. It's good to know I still have a shot even if I don't use meta keywords
Meta tags may or may not be relevant, but it is a good idea to just include them in the equation, in any case, you could just have meta description tags which seem to be recognized for presentation in search results pages, and some people say meta keywords tags arebeing ignored because of abuse, but that may or may not be true,
Not at all, they still have use when showing your site on Search Engines... It's like a sneak peak on what yor site can offer...
i think it's only google that completely disregard them, and remember that while google is going to be your biggest source, traffic comes from all over the place. write tight, related keywords and keep them minimal. i think this will give you the best results.
Yes! its true for major search engines like Google, Yahoo etc. meta key words no longer exit. As these engines don't like or count hidden texts, so don't waste your time on building them.
yes, meta keywords is useless for google, which important are the title and the description because these are the first thing that robots will crawl and store in its data centers.
oops. thanks koochook. i guess my question is a little mixed up. i forgot that there is a difference between meta keywords and other meta tags. thanks for the correction