I wouldn't have thought your site would be penalized, but why would you want to frequently update these elements?
I suggest not doing it.. It may have a little impact ( a lot less than it would be if you would change the title tag frequently ) but still, why risk dropping a couple of places in the serps ?
Change in meta tags depends on change in content of page. If you wish to do so without change in content ( i.e to enhance them) then you can do it as frequent as you want. BTW, meta tags are not so important.
maybe not for the major engines but when dealing with online marketing we should all be thinking of the bigger picture, Google may have a massive market share but lets not loose out on the small number of visitors that come from minor search engines. Lets all take our Google blinkers off hey
These two tags go hand in hand with the page's content. If you feel that there's a need in changing the METAs to go with the latest content, proceed as you wish. No penalties will be awarded to webmasters for trying to keep the content description updated
I agree with you. Also, meta description tag often appears in serps, so it is important at CTR point.
I don't think that you will be penalized. I always refine my meta tags to help me rank higher for certain keywords. As people already said here, meta tags do not weight heavily in SERPs. Your title, and keywords inside your pages are more important.
Updating Tags frequently? think no probs on it. this is natural updates, it just like testing and proving. need some test? then apply, just like that. but being penalized by i dont thinks so.
If you want to rank well for key words and phrases ect... you would not want to remove any tags. Concistancy is key with seo, you have to keep trying at the key words you wan and stick with it. If you change them, it takes longer for search engines to place you anywhere because you are all over the place. If you optimize your site for some key words that are not too competitive and want to go for harder ones in the future, then I think that is okay.
I don't think it's a great idea, because your going to be changing keywords around that your site might have ranked good for..
I did a short experiment in my seo contest entry - I changed the site from having full meta tags to having none except title. It made no difference - I remained in 3rd position for the key phrase (left it like that for about 2 weeks) Then I added the description and keyword tags - no change. Finally I changed the title tag and still I haven't budged from 3rd place - positions 4+ are moving around quite a bit but 1-3 seem stuck. I know it wasn't a long term test and is probably inconclusive because of the time element but considering that everyone in that contest is working on SEO (not something you know about any other key phrase) I would have though it would make some difference rather quickly but nothing I can see in the serps. Lisa
According to a Google-run seminar I attended this week, the three tags that matter are: Title, Description, Anchor. Google suggested that the Title tag be a phrase that someone would search on rather than one or two words. They said the Title tag should be a shorter version of the Description tag. Also Googlebot has a hard time reading combined words, so one-word anchors are best.
Acc to me, the moment you change your MEtas.. you are playing around with your SERPS. this could prove +ve and -ve... so beware.
hell if I knew them all I would do! the majority all falls under one roof anyway, about 40-odd of them are made up of links anyway probably If I wrote down every technique I knew I would but lack of time and thinking power prevents me so here's a rough guide to them http://www.seomoz.org/articles/search-ranking-factors.php