Do meta tags in your web pages give you SEO advantages?

Is it true that keywords and description metatags are a joke and that anyone bothering to put them on their web pages is wasting their time?

In Internet marketing, and particularly SEO, you should be very wary of anyone who makes categorical statements. Especially when those statements are about Google.

The fact is that nobody really knows.

What IS ‘known’ is that Google SAY they don’t take any notice of the keywords meta tag. I emphasize SAY because Google have a track record of saying one thing and meaning another. It really isn’t in their interest to tell you what they really take notice of in ranking web pages.

Having said that, there is probably little or no actual Search Engine Optimization benefit to spending a long time crafting a keyword-stuffed meta tag. There MAY be a benefit, however, in simply putting one or two primary keywords in there. Why? Because even if none of the search engines use the data today, who is to say that they won’t use it tomorrow. Algorithms change all the time and we generally have no idea what is making a difference at the margin.

And if someone comes up with real proof in two years time that pages with keyword meta tags on them rank better you would kick yourself if you’d assumed that putting it on the thousands of pages you may have built by then was ‘a joke’. Especially as that joke takes such little time and effort to tell.

A search on the term ‘keyword meta tag’ will find you all kinds of ‘experts’ who suggest that both the keywords and the description meta tags are a waste of time. That is patently false because you can prove that Google are reading the description tag – that’s where they prefer to get the snippet they use to describe your page in their listings.

There is no evidence that the description tag gives you any ranking advantage, but it sure as anything helps to draw attention to your page wherever it does get ranked.

It seems that Google prefer to use the description meta IF it includes the primary keyword for the page. If not, they will pick a random snippet from you page text that does include the keyword or phrase – as far as possible.

This can lead to some weird listings – as we all know.

To some extent you can control that by crafting a good description meta – one that includes your primary keyphrase and, in a natural writing style, common derivations of it.

As I said at the beginning, anyone claiming to be an ‘expert’ on what Google do or don’t do, and who gives you concrete, black & white instructions about what will or won’t rank your pages is stretching their own reputation thinly and quite probably is looking to sell you something.

And, although I’m not trying to sell you anything, I include my own observations in that disclaimer as well.

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