Newcomers to Internet marketing should not heed this type of advice.
This is the type of advice they need to find more of. The correct kind that is.
The search engines explicitly recommend the use of meta tags. Do some research.
They do not recommend it. They say nothing about it.
Here's what Google recommends to webmasters. Not a single word on Meta tags can be found.
Here are MSN's guidelines. Same thing. You do the research and you'll find that meta tags are not used in the ranking algorithms of the search engines thanks to the abuse of them back in the early days of the search engines. This is so basic it is very scary that you call yourself an SEO expert and then spit out this kind of garbage.
SEO juniors need to read what the search engines have to say about proper usage of meta tags and why they are important to the search engines, then make up their own minds about if and how to use meta tags.
Let me save them some time. Use the Meta Description tag as Google and MSN will use it in the absence of a Dmoz listing for your site or you use the NOOPD Meta tag on your pages. The Meta Keywords tag is only useful for directory and minor (VERY Minor) search engines that still use them because they lack an advanced search algorithm. There, I saved them the effort.
Suggesting otherwise, is like selling someone a car without any brakes. Yep, the car will run fine until it needs to come to a stop.
Awful analogy. I'll skip it.
Why would you want to under-equip a newcomer in SEO. Advanced web site promotion specialists may have sufficient content crafting abilities to alleviate many basic SEO elements, but those types of exceptionally skilled Internet marketers need not come here for SEO tips and advice.
Being new to SEO doesn't make Meta tags suddenly work. So why tell them that? Tell them the truth right from the beginning so they don't waste their time on something that offers them no return for their effort. Something like the effect of incoming links and what makes links different. Ya know, something that actually will affect their rankings.
According to the search engines and not the nobodies that stymiee is referring to, it always a good SEO practice to suggest something to the search engines using meta tags which should briefly highlight the unique and pertinent web page content. MSN and Yahoo are very clear about this. Google is a little wishy-washy when it comes to explaining how and why to use meta tags but that is not an indication that they do not gather up information within the meta tags for consideration. Google reads everything and with its thousands of web content filtering mechanisms, meta tags when they are available are undoubtedly factored into rankings.
Wrong. Period. This has been gone over so many times in so many forums and communities that the fact that we have to even debate this is ridiculous. The meta description and meta keywords tags are not used in the search engine algorithms of the major search engines. Only other tags like ROBOTS and NOODP are used and they do not affect a page's rankings in the SERPs.
Want to suggest something to the search engines? Try using good content. (What a concept!)
For those of you who like to use your brain and think things out, chew on this. It should help to make the concept clearer for you. Ranking algorithms are based on content a page provides and its relevancy to a search term. Meta Tags offer nothing to the user and can be easily manipulated with no detrimental affect to the web page. Thus, just like comments in HTML, they are ignored. They have no value in SEO. They have value in other areas of the web, but your rankings in the SERPs of the major search engines is not one of them.
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