Meta tags or not. Remove them

I was a strong believer in meta tags, thinking that even though they don't add much weight that they can't do any harm if used right and why not use them.

However with meta descriptions and keywords on all my sites, i find that either because pages are dynamically generated or there are so many static pages in a site, i end up with many duplicate descriptions and keywords. And i assume this is the reason for my sites have such a high number of supplemental indexed pages.

Just wondering If anyone had any experience removing these site wide (all pages becoming meta tagless apart from title). Any adverse affects? any positives?

 

meta tags are obsolete.

 

I totally agree. Now most of the Search engines just ignores them.

 

I disagree. Meta tags are useful if you know how to use them. If your pages are generated in that fashion then for the most part you will continue to have the same titles and descriptions. This is why I always use just static html and make sure that I write my own titles and descriptions for each page.

I try to tell people this all the time but no one seems to believe so here is an example of how to stay away from dup content and supplemental results.

have a look at my indexed pages here if you go back a few pages you will notice that for the most part the titles are the same, however just by adding a number at the end of each title not only in the title tag, but as well as the alt tag and h1 headers and page names it avoids the dup penalty and kept these pages away from the supplemental index.

Believe me this works. The same rings true for this site a directory that I am still working on.

 

imo meta keywords tag is pretty much usless.
but you should add meta description tag to get better CTR in serp.

 

IMO metatags are not useless. I remember when I misspelled one word in my meta-keywords and found out that this mis-spelled meta keyword is bringing me some traffic. So some search engines are still looking for them. So what is the harm in putting them if they can bring one or two extra visitors per day.

 

Meta tags are not useless!

Your Meta description is your greatest asset once you rank on the front Page in G! - If present, it is the text displayed in the SERPS.

I think anyone who doesn't use a Meta description is a bloody idiot.

You should write an accurate, eye-catching description - so you do get the click-thru's when your site comes up in the Serps. For the sake of a few seconds, I also add a few meta keywords. Yes, some SE's ignore them, but for those that don't, for the time it takes it is simply stupid not to put them there.

Sure, they might only bring 1-2 visitors a day, but if those 1-2 visitors are the ones who convert for you, the potential is that your earnigs could be lower....

 

Meta tags are not totally useless atleast yahoo give some importance to them IMO

 

Keep the meta tags. It won't hurt.

I have a PR6 site and I change the meta tags now and then; and I start to rank within a month.

 

I was not looking at arguing the usefulness/uselessness of meta tags. Obiously everyone has their own idea and they do not play that big a part (if any) in SEO.

My question was: My sites rank fairly well in SERPS. All sites are first page on most competitive words on MSN, Yahoo results are OK, Google.. that's another story.

Currently all sites have meta tag descriptions and keywords. Just wondering what effect i would see if i removed them.

Since MSN places some importance on these? will i loose all my good MSN SERPS? Problem is from my experience MSN seems to like them, and Google seems to be putting me in the supplemental because of them?

 

Having the same meta description on each page is not really good imho, as it doesn't describe what the page is about, but what the site is about...

 

Keep the meta tags. Why not consider using your database to supply each dynamic page with an individual meta tag title, description etc

 

wow what a luck, u received even more traffic thru misspelled yeah thats right when somebody types wrong spelling the search results will show results containing misspelled word and this is good source of traffic and i agree "Meta Tags" are not outdated/useless only good placement of keywords and title & description is really helpful also take help of seo and make ur site content rich, so keep the meta tags

 

Yes they are useless IF one doesen't give them the same attention as the page.
G allows dmoz override so why would they bother?

One has only mastered dynamic pages if one has total page control and that does include all headers.

Sorry but would anyone read a book where the page starts with the same ... like any SE one would give up after a while....

Expat

 

meta tags work trust me

 

Google doesn't use META tags. But, Google is not the only search engine. There are hundrereds of other search engines out there that still use or rely on META tags, so you can't ignore them completely.

Cryo.

 

This days meta not so usefull, if u want to remove site wide use dreamweaver it will be fast

 

I don't think removing Meta tag descriptions and keywords would hurt your site's rankings in SEs, not even in MSN. Anyways they are not given much of importance by the SEs so having them or not won't make a major difference.

 

I would say that the fact that not ALL search enignes ignore them....keep them.

 

I get quite a bit of traffic for the words humemer and humemr, instead of Hummer.