The Truth about META TAGS
UPDATE: 26/12/2008 Google's recently released SEO Guidelines explicitely state that the META Keywords tag is not used and should not be included in your site. Google does recomend using the META description tag however.
Anyone who knows anything about SEO will have heard and talked about META TAGS. The issues with META TAGS arise when we start to talk about them, any SEO book or tutorial will mention them, any SEO Forum will be filled with "advice" about META TAGS, but what is the truth?
The Truth
The truth of the mater is META TAGS DO NOT EFFECT YOUR SEARCH ENGINE POSITION!. Thats right I said it! Look at the source code for this web site, see any META TAGS?. Nope thats right, you dont! Let me just clarify something for you, META TAGS DO NOT EFFECT YOUR SEARCH ENGINE POSITION!
Historical Factors
OK, OK, so if META TAGS really don't work why does everyone rant and rave about "optimising your meta tags"?
Good question! To answer this we need to go back in time a little bit. Search engines used to use META TAGS to help decide what a page was about. Many search engines were META based search enignes. All that really menas is they use META DATA to interpret a page. Nowadays thats like using a horse and cart to get about in relative terms.
Why they have no effect
The fact is that META DATA in a document is easy for the user to input. Because META TAGS used to make a difference people capitallised on this (as they tend to do) by spamming the hell out of their META TAGS. Well its not long before data integrity and reliability of search became a big issue. So Google had to take action and come up with something better.
So do META TAGS do anything?
Oh yes, they have their place. When Google can't find a scrap of text on your page that is useful it will revert to a META description tag to display in its search results, but be very aware of this, that is all that it does. Let me reafirm, META TAGS DO NOT EFFECT YOUR SEARCH ENGINE POSITION!
In the SEO Industry it is still considered good practice to keep META Keyword and META Description tags in place. This is purely for consistancy and it helps you to describe your page, which is useful when you are dealing with hundreads of pages every day!
Can using META TAGS be detrimental?
Actually yes! If you put information in your META TAGS that isn't on your page you are deliberately trying to decieve search engines. This is actually in violation of the search engine's terms of service and could potentially get you banned!
What to aviod?
Avoid, like the plague anyone that tells you META TAGS are important! They are not!
Don't waste your precious time on META TAGS, they just simply are not worth it. Its amazing how long this fad has stuck around and even more amazing the number of people and companies still charging to "optimise" your META TAGS.
The SEO Files Recomends
Don't waste time or worry about META TAGS, they DO NOT effect your search engine position.