The meta tag question...

New article, same old misinformation...

[TWhalen]

Just read and article about how 'meta tags do you no good' again.
This line of thinking in SEO really frustrates me, especially when many know that in some engines (albeit no major engines) that meta tags DO give a small boost. The articles author even admits that fact:

'Should SEO consultants tell their clients that metatag work is unnecessary? Or cling to the mystique? Should they do the work if it's of marginal benefit? Or could they be doing better things with their time?'

The fact is, once your keyword research for a website is done, it takes about 2 minutes to create meta tags for any given page.
Is that 'too much time' to waste?
Even if tags only give you 'marginal' benefit, isn't it an SEO's responsibility to give their clients EVERY LITTLE margin of benefit they can?

I compare not making meta tags for a page to this:
If you hired a painter to paint the inside of your house, and while painting your doors, he 'skips' painting the tops of those doors. Then he tells you "oh, you don't need paint there because you'll never look up there..."
As a customer, how would that make you feel?

It seems many SEO's waste more time trying to explain to customers why meta tags are worthless than they would by just doing the work, and getting that tiny little boost.

Anyone agree?

[edited by: agerhart at 2:18 am (utc) on Sep. 5, 2002]
[edit reason] removed unnecessary link to article [/edit]

[Mohamed_E]

I suspect that many of the 'meta tags do you no good' articles are simply a reaction to the old "All you need is a good set of META KEYWORDS" approach. This is compounded by the increasingly prevalent opinion that Google, which completely ignores meta tags, is the only search engine that counts.

Meta tags may not be very useful, but as TWhalen so well points out, are almost trivial to implement

[topr8]

i think metatags are dead handy ...

for a quick and easy (but not foolproof of course) way of checking out the keywords my competitors are targeting.

[choster]

An internal search engine is a must for content-rich sites. In turn, for usability and for functionality, meta tags (description, date, author, and often keywords) are usually required for every page worthy of indexing. Whatever reward or penalty this may have on search engine results is of secondary concern to serving the users who've found the site, although that may be heresy to say over here in the SEO forums... :)

[Nick_W]

it takes about 2 minutes to create meta tags for any given page.

Exactly. I usually put them in for client sites but only if I can be bothered for my personal projects ;)

Nick

[pageoneresults]

> Today, some search engines still look at metatags, but increasingly they put much more emphasis on both visible text on the page and "off-page factors" (popularity, linking structure of the Internet, etc.) to measure page relevance.

And, it is possible that the proper use of your META's could be the determining factor in a #1 position. For example, search engine X is one of those who look at the metadata although they give very little weight to that area.

Now, we take the top ten sites and give them all equal scores in on page content and linking structure (inbound and outbound). Five of those top ten sites don't use metadata and are in positions 6 thru 10. The first five use the metadata and are in positions 1 thru 5. I'm speaking outside the Google box right now.

The above is just a rough example where metadata may be the determining factor in a coveted top five position.

> Google doesn't bother with metatags - it doesn't even incorporate the description tag in the summary of page contents, preferring to grab text from the page itself.

I believe we've seen a few posts here in the last 45-60 days that may be contrary to the above statement. We know Google will default to the meta description if it cannot find visible text on the page, such as that with a 100% Flash site or one that is all graphics with no alt tags assigned.

The keywords tag, well, that is another story. I use it at times mostly to focus my on page content and to keep myself in check. Plus, there are still quite a few smaller SE's that look at the metadata.

Search engine technology has come a long way from the days of spamming metadata. Its always been said that your description and keywords should mirror your on page content exactly.

[ciml]

TWhalen:
> The fact is, once your keyword research for a website is done, it takes about 2 minutes to create meta tags for any given page.

It takes longer to craft the words into the page in a natural manner. I think that the extra effort is worthwhile (but Google is my main emphasis and it tends to index body text pretty thoroughly).

choster, I've found that if I try to adapt the pages to the way search engines index, rather than adapt the indexer to the way my pages are made, I end up making pages that rank better in search engines generally.