My site should be ready to go live in about a week. I'm learning as much as I can about SEO at this stage, since most of the design and content is ready.

So far I haven't used a single meta tag. I set a meaningful title on each page. I use paragraph tags, h1s and 2s and 3s, and in general "semantic markup."

But I haven't created a single "description" or "keyword" tag on any of my pages. Is there any reason to do so? I get the impression search engines have been ignoring them since the 1990s.

Google sometimes use the description tag as the text snippet in SERPS. But it pays no attention to the keywords meta tag.

I think content is more relevant than meta tags.

i still give importance on other meta like description, keywords and alt tag.

You're turn up for searches in alt attributes, but they're required anyway, so you really ought to take advantage of them.

Dont give more than 5-10 minutes on the metas but as already told google shows the description but the SERP's are not effected by it.

Originally Posted by jaguar-archie15

i still give importance on other meta like description, keywords and alt tag.

alt attribute

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

My site should be ready to go live in about a week. I'm learning as much as I can about SEO at this stage, since most of the design and content is ready.

So far I haven't used a single meta tag. I set a meaningful title on each page. I use paragraph tags, h1s and 2s and 3s, and in general "semantic markup."

But I haven't created a single "description" or "keyword" tag on any of my pages. Is there any reason to do so? I get the impression search engines have been ignoring them since the 1990s.

The title tag has some good weight and the description tag is crucial as to whether searchers click your listing. many top ranked sites aren't running at full potential because their site descriptions suck. Right a descriptive, accurate and killing description. You will see your traffic increase just from phrases you already hold. The keyword tag is useless and does not need to be used.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

alt attribute

i still give importance on other meta like description, keywords tag and alt attribute.

I recently increased the Google search position from approximately 15 to 1, 2 and 4 by simply rewriting the Headers to include keywords - Page Rank did not change but now every page in the site is at the top of the first page. Obviously Google likes <H1>.

JohnJ

Originally Posted by jaguar-archie15

i still give importance on other meta like description, keywords tag and alt attribute.

The keyword tag is no longer valued

Originally Posted by Visio

The keyword tag is no longer valued

Not really, they are "somehow" important because keywords may help you increase rankings in search engines.

Meta tags are not really Important, but SE based on meta to snippet pages. also "KEYWORD TAG"is used only to tell that phrase is a your targeted Keywords. But in SERPS It would not affect.

Cheers

Wow, there's a lot of confusion here! I think I know less now than when I started the thread.

definitely confusing.
Too many people joining the thread and posting irrelevant information.

meta tags;
Only two are of concern for SEO
<meta name="keywords" content="short list of keywords for the page">
pretty much ignored for ranking by the main three SEs

<meta name="description" content="A short description for this page. One sentence including keywords for the page where appropriate">
Can be used by all the SEs as the text snippet in the SERPs. Use it as a way of improving click throughs for that page.

As a good design practice, you should just put them if you have the time, especially the title tag and alt attributes

especially the title tag and alt attributes

And that has what? to do with meta tags exactly ??

and how or why is using meta tags good practice ?

can we just stop posting irrelevant and off-topic information please.

meta tags are not everthink for your seo but they help search engine to recognize your pages content . you must add meta tags to your pages urgently

Originally Posted by trichnosis

meta tags are not everthink for your seo but they help search engine to recognize your pages content . you must add meta tags to your pages urgently

They use the content to recognise the content, and google ignores the keywords meta tag entirely.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

And that has what? to do with meta tags exactly ??
can we just stop posting irrelevant and off-topic information please.

Chrishirst is right ... as usual. I notice a few things reading this thread:

1. There seems to be a lot of confusion about a meta tag is. People seem to be including title as a meta tag, probably because it belongs in the head section, and people seem to also consider alt attributes as meta data ... probably because they aren't really displayed. ( In IE when you mouse over, in FireFox only while the image is downloading. )
2. Web masters mostly fall into two camps. Either you make lots of money without much effort, or you build quality content.
3. I really ought to go back and add descriptions to all my pages.