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March 24th, 2010 by Nick
META tags have been used in search engine optimization since the whole concept of optimisation came around, and as such many people think of them as being outdated and unnecessary. However, other people still see them as being an important part of on page SEO work, so the question is – which side should we be on?
Well, in reality, there are fair points on both sides of the argument. Some META tags certainly don’t have the influence they used to in terms of optimisation, but still they should never be overlooked and can be beneficial to helping search engines understand what each page on your website is and offers to users.
Let’s start with the keyword tag. This is one of the tags that has been so abused in the past by black hat SEOers that it is generally considered that they are not even used by search engines anymore in terms of how they rank sites. However they can still be optimised to help search engines see that the keywords in the metas match up with the content actually on the page, which can only help site’s online reputation management.
The description tag has two points of view. The description tag is used as the snippet of information in search engines – in other words, it’s the sales text. It doesn’t necessarily have to be optimised in terms of keywords, but should always be written coherently and persuasively in an attempt to attract customers. So, whilst it doesn’t necessarily influence your overall search engine optimisation in the usual sense, it certainly does given the amount of interest it can generate in the site.
Then there’s the title tag. This is the one that really does have an impact in terms of SEO, and always needs to be optimised for SEO keywords. It’s the one that gets picked up by search engines and can drastically improve your rankings, so careful consideration always needs to be taken in its construction. The title tag should ideally have the main keywords as close to the front of it as possible and certainly shouldn’t be filled with any unrelated keywords or things that you don’t actually sell, and using it effectively can be one of the most successful on-page optimisation techniques.
Robots tags are also essential to consider. These tags tell any web crawlers whether they should index the current page (or not, as the case may be), and can be invaluable in helping your site to appear in search results. Crawlers always need direction, and if you write this tag correctly it can lead to great results.
As you can see, META tags really can be important in terms of SEO. Even though they’re thought of as old-hat by some they should never be overlooked, and although not all of them can have such an impact it can’t be denied that a few carefully-considered and properly worded tags can lead to great results. So, make sure you understand the benefits that each of these META tags can bring, and our free online META tag generator can help you create optimised tags to help your SEO campaign.
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Sure they are! Not as important as some years ago but it is definitely worth the time. The TITLE tag is fundamental is still fundamental, there have been several studies showing that it is probably the most important thing together with content and links. The description still has some use the keywords are not worth the time.