Please advise ref meta tags and meta keywords

[ndavies1]

Hello everyone...

I have been reading through some of the forum info and have purchased Peter's Videos.

One question I have is, are Meta tags and a meta keywords actually read by the search engines (google, yahoo and msn) that would consequently improve the sites recogonition? In one thread it is clearly said that they are not! Can anyone advise please?

If they are not read then what are they there for?

Thanks

[g42]

Hi,
Meta tags and descriptions are basically to tell the spiders what your site is about. Of course your content is more important than meta tags. They're not really very important, although I think google uses my meta tags for the description when my site comes up in its searches. In msn and yahoo the meta description comes up and also the first few words of the page.

If you know how to put them into your webpage fine, if not I wouldn't stress about it.

Jason

[fisicx]

Got to disagree with you g42,

The meta description is very important to both your ranking and getting a potential customer to select your page in preference to someone elses.

A well written metatag can boost your ranking and provide customers with a short synopsis of the page content. Without a decent description, the robots will select a chunk of text off the page that in some cases can put people off.

[JustOneUK]

Originally Posted by ndavies1

Hello everyone...


One question I have is, are Meta tags and a meta keywords actually read by the search engines (google, yahoo and msn) that would consequently improve the sites recogonition? In one thread it is clearly said that they are not! Can anyone advise please?

If they are not read then what are they there for?

They are read, they have to be just in case you use something like "No Follow" in there.
The only debate flying around at the moment is whether or not the "keywords" meta actually does anything.
I have seen sites at the top of results that don't use the keyword meta, but I have never heard of anyone's site suffering from using the keyword tag.
So I would currently advise to use them.


James.

[affiliate]

- meta tag description is important but meta tag keyword is without any purpose and most seo expert confirm that. because the spiders will determine your web page relavant by crawling your content and the most important b y anchor text in backlinks.
the most important is title and metatag description: start your title and metatag description by using keywords. start your web page by your keywords.

[aishacristal]

Meta tag description and title are the basics of your sites.It tells the spider about your site.

If title and description of site is well maintained means its appropriate according to your site,then it helps in increasing the ranking of your site in Google.

These are the milestones for your site.so be careful while deciding the title and description of site.

[matt1biz]

I always include both meta description and keyword tags on pages of sites.

Meta description is very importnat as this is actually used by search engines for ranking sites, so make sure that you use your main keywords in this.

The description tag is also important as this can be used as the search snippet that is shown below the links in the search results - so make sure it's well written and offers an inducement for people to visit your site.

Although the big serach engines don't currently use the meta keyword tag, some still do, and it's always good to include it from a usability point of view and to futureproof having to add them all in if it does start to get used again.