The typical and commonly assumed myth about meta-tags is that ‘they make all the difference in our website being found’ or ‘websites get on top of the search engines’ because meta tags tell Google and the other major engines how important and relevant our site is’.  The reality about the statements above is that they’re false…believe it or not.  A few years ago, they did help a little, but ultimately, they never were a huge factor in increasing your page rank. It wasn’t long until your average SEO campaign was riddled full of stories about how search engine optimization is completely dependent on meta tags, and every ‘seo expert’ insisted it was a requirement.   

Here’s the reality.  When the net was in its infancy, meta tags were originally incorporated in a site as an assistance tool for webmasters. They were usually included to help the engines discover what a site was all about.  Granted, as time went on, and SEO became a recognized industry, Google and the other major search engines got so much more sophisticated that they could read snippets, and usually figure it out pretty well on their own, but ultimately, meta-tags are just a little direction for the engines to identify with…not a means of choosing how something should be ranked.  If search engine optimization were that easy, you wouldn’t need us to do it for you.

As I’m sure you’ve probably figured out, it wasn’t long until people really figured out how to abuse the system, and the major search engines, most importantly Google, realized what was going on, and took the weight off meta tags almost completely. The one or two you need to make a page ‘recognizable’ quickly became 50-100 per page, all stacked up one after another, directing Google and the other major engines think that a page holds relevance in a million different categories.  

Pretty smart.  Knowing it’s a computer checking to see what your page is all about we can pull traffic from all sorts of other busy places.  Even though our page is about porn, we’ll meta tag it to be about mortgages, and steal a slice of that very busy pie.  Needless to say, Google didn’t take these undermined tactics all that well…and ultimately didn’t really stand for it, which is why Google page rank became much more important that all the shady mismatched anchor texted links and pointless meta tags.  Our search engine optimization experts are happy to explain and help you incorporate SEO strategies that will benefit you well, and add a natural increase to your rankings.      

The bottom line, is that for SEO, and really, for the engines…it is worthwhile to include them.  You never know what part of your page Google and the other major engines will take their random sampling of text from, and decide what to incorporate in their description of you for searchers to see as your ‘snippet’.  The last thing you’d want your clients to think your page is about is: ©2010 New Pulse Management.  It doesn’t exactly tell a surfer that NPM is the one stop shop for search engine optimization and web design. Meta tags tell the engines what to fill your snippet with to a certain degree.  So choose a good ‘one liner’ and have your website designer, or SEO specialist incorporate it.  Meta tags only take a few minutes to build, and ultimately, their original purpose still holds true.  The thing to remember though is that despite their importance in SEO, they’re not going to be the part of the SEO campaign that truly makes or breaks you your visibility and success.