Meta Tags Importance

[bhartzer]

webaholic, I wouldn't bother adding Dublin Core meta data. What's most important at this point is the title and meta description tags, especially because they are used/displayed in the actual search results listing.

[mjtaylor]

has anybody had, or know of success stories by using the location meta tags? are they even necessary?

As I said in an earlier post on this thread: http://www.webproworld.com/webmaster...l=1#post555286, I now use microformats to indicate location. Google added one client site to Places within a few days of my doing that the first time. Sold me on the concept.

[JBullet]

I've seen videos in which Matt Cutts says that Google does not use meta description and meta keywords in their ranking of sites.

Do other search engines use these as part of their ranking?

If they don't, whilst the benefit of completing a meta description is obvious, what is the benefit of entering meta keyword information?

[deepsand]

I've seen videos in which Matt Cutts says that Google does not use meta description and meta keywords in their ranking of sites.

Do other search engines use these as part of their ranking?

If they don't, whilst the benefit of completing a meta description is obvious, what is the benefit of entering meta keyword information?

There is a difference between using/not using something re. ranking in SERP displays and using it for other purposes. For example, while Google may not use <meta description> for SERP rank purposes, it does index it and use it as a potential source of data to be displayed in the SERPs as the descriptive snippet.

Other SEs and private crawlers likewise use various data elements in different ways that are not fully publicly disclosed. Therefore, one should not assume that because Google does or does not do something necessarily means that all others follow suit. In fact, others cannot duplicate what Google does as it does not fully disclose what it does.

[williamc]

META title, META keywords, and META description are the most important one's to focus on optimize these only.

Enlighten us as to why they are important to optimize for.

[williamc]

hi, in seo point of view using description, keywords and title meat tags are important one. there is no harm in using this.

Lemme just slap a sirloin on that tag.

[LD]

Lemme just slap a sirloin on that tag.

I've never heard of the meat tags. But, I'll take mine medium please!

[deepsand]

... meta tags today are used only to index content based on its LSI keywords ...

Not only is there no such thing as an "LSI keyword," but meta tags are of of no material effect on LSI analysis. LSI is not about words, but about the meanings of a body of words.

[LD]

When we talk about meta tags, three things comes our mind - Title, Description and Keywords.

The "Title" tag is not a meta tag.

[LD]

Cutts even says, taking more time to put proper descriptions meta data is worth your while, so I think that is time well spent.

filling it with meta data could a) increase the code on your website making it load slower

So you are saying an extra 30-40 lines of code will slow down the loading of a web page?

b) submit too much information to Search Engines devaluing your meta data

What information, exactly, are you referring to as "too much" which will "devalue" meta data??

c) Crawlers may only pay attention to snippets.

As above, spend the time on compelling and well written Description meta data and the info G takes and uses in the SERPs more likely could be taken from the Description.