Are meta tags still important to SEO?

There seem to be conflicting opinions on this one, so what is your view:
Are meta tags still relevant to SEO and do spiders take any notice of them?

T

 

Meta description is a vital tool that aids conversion from just being read in the SERPs to actually bing clicked.

It's like when you buy a birck and mortar shop in a premium location in the High Street. The Meta description is your shop front. If you just spent all your time getting that SERP position would you have a delapidated shop front that is not appealing, or a sign that says "come in" instead of "blue widget store"?

Meta description (and title) is the door from the SE to your site. Of course it's vital.

 

Search for news on Google and look at the BBC result. The snippet is copied from the meta description on the http://news.bbc.co.uk/ page. Thats how important meta descriptions are.

 

There's still some SE's that use your description in it's rankings, so yeh definetly have one. Keywords aint needed

 

Also make sure your meta description is different on every page.

 

Thanks for pointing that out, it seems so obvious now. Thankfully it is also consistent with what I have been practising on my sites.

One thing I find quite worrying though is that an SEO article in a recent edition of ".Net" magazine completely ignored meta tags altogether and in fact stated that they were no longer relevant. I find that bewildering considering the many people who might regard the mag as an 'authority' on Web design.

T

 

They are an authority on web design, not on SEO.

 

Well, does it hurt you to have meta tags, no. So why not have them :s

 

Good point, but they ran the article on SEO so many Webmasters will have picked up on it.

T

 

...otherwise you'll find your pages in the Supplemental Index.

Meta keywords is perhaps less important these days, after certain people used to stuff them with any old rubbish (i.e. spam). Yahoo and MSN seem to use them still, though much more intelligently than they used too. Google AdSense can also make use of them sometimes, as well as some of the minor search engines.

Cryo.

 

Amsterdam,

the title meta tag is still very important and is used by all the engines.

The description meta tag is still important, although probably does not influence results in Google.

The keywords meta tag is useful for checking content against a brief.

 

Could you clarify what this means and how to go about it please?

T

 

Amsterdam,

using a meta tag tool you can check the alignment of your keywords tag with the content on the page. See: http://www.widexl.com

 

Here is my experience with use of metatags.

In MSN and Yahoo, they are very important. I've tested on one of my pages and the result was increase in rankings over night.

For Google, I had NO advantages of using Meta. Why so? Because Google don't weight Meta tags as much as the other.

Instead of adding a lot of tags remember to do this instead:

Lets say you are writing about product XXXX

Start the sentence with using product name, and then mention it again before you end your sentence.

Make sure are using the the product in your page title.

 

for me, tags still important, some tags still have credits, maybe not on SE's but not on posible visitors.

 

I would highly recommend to include meta tags in your pages. It is absolutely vital to have a unique Meta keywords, description, and title for each individual page on your site.

 

Did you not see my example with the BBC link above? Google uses the meta description to populate the snippet.

 

i dont know if they are used (or important) but i generally make sure i have meta tags (keywords & description) on most of my important pages.

 

meta keywords are good for telling your competition what keywords your competing for...

 

I think it is important. Not that important but it still has its own place.