Ranking Without Meta Tags

New Optimization Technique?

[is300]

One of my competitors is ranking extremely well for a dozen competitive phrases. She has dozens of optimized pages in this format: domain.com/widgets.htm.

What's interesting though is that none of these optimized pages use Meta Keyword tags nor Meta Description tags. The rest of the pages follow normal SEO principles. Because of good internal linking methodologies, all the pages have a high amount of inbound links with the various keywords in the links.

I realize keyword tags aren't really needed for google but the description one was somewhat important i thought.

[PaulHudson]

One of my sites ranked quite well on a deliberately misspelled word in the title and meta description.

The word was spelt correctly on the rest of the site.

Out of curiosity I changed the meta description and title to the correct spelling and my site dropped out of the SERP's.

I’m sure Google used the title more than the meta description but still interesting that it ranked me when that spelling did not appear anywhere else. Proof for me it uses them to some extent.

I've not noticed my meta description being used as the description in the SERP's normally uses the text at the bottom of my page below where I put my text links.

[siteseo]

Going back to my post #7, which was questioned, many of Amazon's pages that rank well HAVE no backlinks to them, including affiliates. Obviously both links and on-page content help, but for some sites IBL's are less of a factor.

[Spine]

Meta tag? We don't need no steenking meta tag.

[Web Footed Newbie]

I agree that there are other search engines that use meta tags, and G does not penalize if you have them. Proof? For one of my search phrases with over 7 million results shows the following:
On G, phrase is #5
On MSN, phrase is #1
On Yahoo, phrase is #1

My optimization is very good on page, and the page includes the most important metas, in this order: title, description, keywords.
I have few, but several strong and relevant inbound and outbound links.
WFN

[siteseo]

Optimize for every algorithm contingency, eh?

And remember...
"IBL's cover a multitude of sins"

[rytis]

Ironically this same thread addresses the problem quite obviously: view source of this page and then search Google for this page's title, even without quotes ;)

[petehall]

Ironically this same thread addresses the problem quite obviously: view source of this page and then search Google for this page's title, even without quotes ;)

Ha ha, well spotted! :-)