Meta tags optimization is not all

Many webmasters are looking at their meta tags as the main thing to SEO.
This is wrong move, since the page importance to the search engines, is much more than just the meta tags.

Page title, description and keywords are important, but think about those too:

Tip #1: Relevant and real content
Tip #2: anchor text to all links
Tip #3: Alt to all pictures
Tip #4: Title to all pictures

All the best

 

Helpful post but need to say that title attribute for pictures has not much seo weight... Other things are very important!

 

I don't think many webmasters have considered meta tags as all that important since about 2005.
And certainly not the keyword tag, which major search engines don't read.

The important thimgs are -
content
site build - e.g - no canonical issues, any redirects permant 301s
content
backlinks

In that order, in my opinion.

 

I take it you consider content to be utterly important. You have it 2 times

I don't know why people care about their meta tags. The only things that matter to me is the meta description - just because thats what people see when you rank.

 

Just to clarify <title> is not a meta element. Just because it appears within the head element of an HTML document does not make it a meta element. If it doesn't start with "<meta " then it's not a meta element. The link element is not a meta element either for the same reason... it doesn't start with "<meta ".

Optimizing your title element is the most important on-page optimization that you'll do. The title element is the most important on-page ranking factor at every search engine I know of. The value you pick for your title element should determine how you optmize every other on-page, on-site, and off-site ranking factor that affects that page. Once you know the value you're going to use for the title element, you can then optimize h1 and h2 elements, the page name portion of the URL, the link text other pages on the site uses to link to that page, the link text used to link to that page from other sites (where you might be planting unnatural links like article submission sites, directories, forum sigs, dofollow blog comments, etc.). They should all be targeting the keyword phrase(s) listed in the title element of that page or some slight variation of the title.

The title should accurately reflect that content in the main body of the page, but I wouldn't think too much about the keywords in the title element when writing the content other than to remind yourself to stay focused on that topic. I would rather the content be written for human consumption, and not be "optimized" for search engines. I optimize all of the supporting structures to the content. Having good content that sounds natural that people want to read is much more imporant than getting a 5.25% density (or whatever some random person says you should be targeting for density these days). My content typically ends up with 1-2% density.

Most search engines completely ignore the meta keywords element (except Yahoo! as Danny Sullivan proved after a Yahoo! exec at SMX said they were ignoring it). So from a ranking perspective, it's pretty much worthless.

Most search engines ignore meta description elements in their ranking algorithm as well. But it is VERY important to optimize your meta description elements. They are not used as a ranking factor at most search engines (including Google), but they are still very important because they get shown as the snippet of text between your title and URL in the SERPs at almost every search engine. It may or may not be shown Google as the Google search snippet.

So why is it so important at Google? There are two reasons:

1) Because a well optimized meta element will be shown more often as your URL's snippet in the Google SERPs (assuming you've done a good job optimizing other on-page, on-site, and off-site rankjing elements like title, h1, inbound link text, etc. so that the page's optimization is focused on 1-3 targeted keyword phrases). You would need to understand how Google chooses the search snippet to understand how to optimize it.
2) Because if you CAN get your meta description to show as the Google snippet more often and you HAVE optimized the meta description properly with a call to action, your meta description will have a better click-thru-rate than if Google simply constructs a snippet by concatenating a bunch of random sentence fragments from the page together.

There are LOTS of things to optimize... some are on-page factors like the title element, meta description element, header elements (h1, h2s, h3s, etc.), keyword rich page name, content of the page... there are on-site factors like information architecture, navigation and the associated link text, other internal linking structures like breadcrumbs and footers and associated link text, contextual links and associated link text, optimizing image links and the associated alt text, URL canonicalization policies... and off-site factors basically being links from external sites and the associated link text. This barely scratches the surface of what you should be optimizing.

What most SEOs don't get is that search engine optimization is NOT just about rankings. You don't only optimize your rankings. You should be optimizing click-thru-rates so that when your URLs do appear in the SERPs, searchers are more inclined to click on them and visit your site. And ultimately search engine optimization is about conversions. You are optimizing your visibility in the various search engines to maximize rankings so you have a chance to maximize click-thru-rates so you can maximize conversions. Without click-thrus and conversions, maximizing your rankings would be pointless.

 

H1 tag is more important.

 

According to my knowledge, now a days Google are not giving any value for meta tags, so it is better give concentrate on other way for traffic rather then put meta tags in pages....

 

Very useful information, also it is important to say that your keywods must be in the content with a logic meaning and make link building

 

It is SO important to worry about keyword density as well! You don't want to spam your page with too many keywords and make the SE's consider your site garbage. Be very careful with your keyword density and your quality of wording. Keyword stuffing may work for a day or two but once the SE's figure out what you are doing, they will penalize your site

 

In my own experiences, among all meta tags, the meta description tag might be the only useful tag for SEO purpose these days. We need to write keyword oriented ad-liked attractive contents for our meta description tags.

Have a nice day,

 

My point of view meta tags are very important for SEO..Google quickly will index the pages using meta tags..whether you doesn't added the meta tags then google takes more to tyo index tour site.

 

Thanks for all the info guys

 

Meta keywords is not important but meta description is still important for SEO

 

Being in the SEO biz I can tell you that meta tags are very important but it is only a part of on-site optimization, content is as important, and keyword density.

 

Thanks for good information.

 

No doubt, meta tags information is first brief introduction of your web page and Google give the importance to this info. It should be related to page content and follow the Google webmaster guidelines.

 

Heading Tags also very important for getting good results in SE's

 

i think meta is still important but alt tag , H1 and other tags are also important
Title , Meta keyword , description are also important

 

will you say please How alt tag is important, it is just describe image name then how it will effect traffic ?

 

quotes above and what I have read on my own, the meta tag is what is really important. Good topic though.