Are Meta Tags Important?
How to Make The Most of Your Meta Tags
Looking to jump to the top of search engines? Some people believe all you need to do is drop a few simple meta tags into your code and the rest is history. Truth be told, meta tags play a very minor role in determining search engine rankings. (Quite possibly no role at all depending on whom you talk to.) However this does not mean you should ignore your meta tags. Outlined below I recommend how to make the most out of some of the most popular meta tags.
<Description> Meta Tag
While meta tags are becoming of less value each day they are still important to include MSN and Yahoo!. Still play close attention to the <description> tag and often times the <description> tag will show up as the description of your site in search results.
<Keywords> Meta Tag
As with the <description> meta tag, MSN and Yahoo! also keep a close eye on the <keywords> meta tag. Do not keyword stuff the meta tag. Keep it around 8 keywords or keyword phrases. Also, make sure that your <keywords> meta tag only uses keywords from within the page. Using keywords not directly used on your page can hurt your rankings.
<Language> Meta Tag
Any website that is language specific should make practical use of the <language> meta tag. Although search engines are able to figure the language out themselves it is better that you give them a hand.
<Refresh> Meta Tag
The only suitable time to use the <refresh> meta tag is when you need to temporarily redirect visitors to another page. Leaving up a <refresh> meta tag as a permanent redirect is considered unethical and will lower your creditability. The best practice is to use a 301 redirect for a permanent redirect.
What Do You Think?
How do you feel about meta tags? Did I missing something important? Are there other meta tags you believe are of greater importance? I encourage you to share your thoughts and opinions within the comments. I would love to hear what you all have to say.
About the Author
Shay Howe
Shay Howe is the man behind letscounthedays. He works as a professional web and user experience designer with a love for creating all that is interactive. Keep up with him on LinkedIn and feel free to follow him on Twitter.
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Meta tag content takes only a little time to create so why not do it? My experiences have shown that value can be found in the description and the geo.position tags.
nice tips for tags, thanks..
great post and you explain very well thanks ………
Excellent article – however I have seen that refreshs of less than 1 second seem to get treated like a 301 – not that I would advocate that, but its worth knowing its not treated like a 302.
Agree that is the first item because most major search engine use it while is not used by Google and may be Bing as well any more.
I always use meta tags, and Google used to ignore them actually but uses them sometimes now, so meta tags technically are being paid attention to more now. It’s kinda like advertising with the description tag, because if you put a good description it will be used as the text in the search results and that’s definitely a good way to get someone to click on your link. Using the title tag is also good, but I don’t wanna spam up my title with keywords which is what some sneaky people do.
Oh and Dan, yes content is important but getting it discovered is even more. Imagine if a search engine put someone else’s result above you just because you completely ignored your meta tags, but the other guy had the exact keywords the person was looking for so they clicked that one and found whatever they needed. You really shouldn’t rule stuff over something, EVERYTHING in web design is important.
You are absolutely correct! When I first started optimizing my website for Google, MSN and Yahoo I had no idea about meta tags.
I found this great meta tag generator website that has been a great help.
Check it out!
@ D Whitmore
Dan you make a valid point – high quality content should rule over meta tags but I do not believe that you should completely ignore them. If you are producing high quality content meta tags should not take a lot of effort to add and can easily become an afterthought of quality content.
The best practice would be to put your determination into high quality content and add meta tags thereafter.
“(Quite possibly no role at all depending on whom you talk to.) However this does not mean you should ignore your meta tags”
You would be far better off spending your valuable time producing high quality content, rather than wasting it on meta tags. You SHOULD ignore them.
Dan
I do completly agree with you. Nowdays searh engines are introducing new techniques and mesures to qualify the importance of websites.