Role of Meta Tags

[ldsc]

Hello Everybody,

What is the role of meta tags in the search engines. Can meta tags improve our SERP. Please Reply me with satisfied answer.

[bradbox]

I find the meta description helps return a good description in a Search Engine result. I.e. the text that follows the name of the result when someone performs a Search. I'm not sure how well the meta keywords are used any more - years ago they were used by Search Engines but abused so much that I don't think they're used any longer.

[shaneekirk]

The Meta Title is also important -- It helps to separate your listing from all of the others.

Agreed on Keywords: We still add these, but they aren't used so much by the search engines anymore.

[bdw]

Google have stated that they don't use the meta description as a factor in their ranking algorithm. As Bradbox said, it is still however important since they will display it as a snippet so it can be a deciding factor on whether someone actually clicks your link.

[phoenix06007]

The Meta tag in html is not a required tag when you're creating your web pages; many pages don't use the tag at all, and I must confess that I've not used it on my home page, although I put it into this page by way of demonstration. To put it briefly, the meta tag is used by search engines to allow them to more accurately list your site in their indexes.

[bdw]

The Meta tag in html is not a required tag when you're creating your web pages;

You are correct only if you don't want traffic on your website.

[beu]

Though not always considered meta, the TITLE element is the most important element in a quality page according to W3C. Google uses TITLE elements for ranking. That said, please note TITLE elements are not the same as title attributes.

Unique meta descriptions are important because they can be displayed in search results via snippets but they aren't used for ranking according to Google.

Here is more about how Google uses meta:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79812

[JohnW]

I think yes meta tags can be important to SERPs and can either help or hurt depending on how they are used. IMO the <title> tag should be used as html tag not as meta tag. But title, keyword and description tags aside, meta tags can be important because they can give valuable instructions for example nofollow, noindex, provide sitemap location, control cache/archive, etc. Also remember that other search engines like Yahoo do read keywords meta tag.

[seomax]

are these tags made for only search engines, and easy to find web page online.

[beu]

IMO the <title> tag should be used as html tag not as meta tag.
So true, I didn't mean to imply anything else. There can only be one TITLE element per page, I was trying to point out that TITLE elements can handle "certain pieces of meta data"....

Note. The META element is a generic mechanism for specifying meta data. However, some HTML elements and attributes already handle certain pieces of meta data and may be used by authors instead of META to specify those pieces: the TITLE element, the ADDRESS element, the INS and DEL elements, the title attribute, and the cite attribute.

- http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#edef-META

@seomax
I'm not sure I'd say only for search engines but yes they are found in the source code of most web pages.

It's best to always use a unique TITLE and meta description. Meta keywords are on the other hand, a little up for debate.

[idahoguy]

Look at it this way, if you don't have a huge amount of pages, why not include META info??? I do agree META KWs don't help but there are many free online META KW generators that look at your page and give you all the KWs you need, that are actually within that page.

Meta descriptions should be used. Google, Yahoo, and MSN, often switch how they display your listing in the SERP. Sometimes they'll pull snippets off your page, sometimes off your description. Why not have it there if a switch comes up. No harm at all.

[shubhangid]

You are correct only if you don't want traffic on your website.

I agree with you!

[kanth]

meta tags are mediators for website to search engines.

[Puneet Thakkar]

All the meta tags are really important as the SERP really depends largely on how well the Meta tags are made...

[cools4u]

There has always been confusion on if Google uses the Meta tag data. But using Meta tags (e.g., description and robots information), you help Google to more accurately crawl, index and return your site in search results.