Are Meta Tags Still Relevant for SEO?
One of the key basic elements of ranking well in the search engines for your desired keywords depend on your META TAGS. Back in the day, Meta Tags were everything. I can still remember the days where given the right meta tags and using the same keyword a few times within your content you could rank well…that’s for those of us who have been doing search engine optimization that long.
The question still remains for many in SEO but also those who are just starting to build a website with SEO in mind. DO META TAGS STILL MATTER?
ARE META TAGS STILL RELEVANT FOR SEO?
Yes. Meta tags still play a vital role for search engines to understand the main topic / subject of that pages’ theme. While search engine algorithms keep getting smarter and have come a long way, they still depend on human direction in terms of content. By human direction, I mean the algorithm still uses these tags and content on the page to rank pages based on relevancy.
WHICH META TAGS STILL MATTER?
TITLE TAG: Still remains key to the success of your on-site optimization efforts. Google places heavy emphasis on title tags. Also, title tags place a crucial role with searchers online. If you think about it, the better (RELEVANT) your title tag is, the better click through rate you’ll have toward that listing. For example, I believe Google places emphasis on CTR (click-through-rate) of organic listings to determine which one is more relevant (moreless as they do for Google Adwords.) Think about it…the more clicks…the better or more relevant that listing is.
DESCRIPTION TAG: Another tag that remains vital to on-site SEO optimization. The description tag (as you’ll see in the video below) guides Google to the relevancy and description of the content. It is crucial that you have a good description tag also for the same reason that I stated above regarding user click through rate. If you have a good description with the right keywords, that means users will more likely click on your listing. In the description tag, write the most relevant and enticing information for users, NOT just Google.
MATT CUTTS ON META TAGS IN 2012:
DOES THE KEYWORD TAG STILL PLAY A ROLE FOR SEO?
To make this real simple, the answer is NO. As you’ve seen Matt Cutts say, Google, or any major search engine for that matter pays no attention to this tag. While it may have been of relevance before to search engine, this was clearly a way for SEOs and webmasters to game the algorithm and use it as a spam tactic ALTHOUGH I can say, it’s not that everyone used it as a spam. While it may have helped before, the engines have move beyond this tag as any measure or guidance for relevancy.Â
BEST RESOURCE FOR META TAGS:
This resource here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79812 is key to understanding the commands of meta tags and how Google reads them.
Tags: meta tags, seo, website optimization Posted in
