Question

Topic: SEO/SEM

Only Need To Worry About Meta Tags For Index Page?

Posted by chilove88 on 9/3/2008 at 12:21 PM ET 50 Points
Hello all,

I'm wondering how important the meta tags on all the pages on our site are and whether or not I should devote the time to improving them. I've read that index page (home page) meta tags are important for SEO but I haven't found much about whether or not paying attention to meta tags on all the other pages of a site really makes a difference or not.

Thanks so much!

Audrey
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Mikee on 9/3/2008 at 12:27 PM Member
    You should worry about them on all pages. The trick is to make sure that they accruately reflect the content on the page.

    Ideally your pages will have different titles and descriptions. This will increase the likelyhood of having interior page indexed by the search engines. You want as many opportunities as possible of having people find you.

    You do not really know what people will search for to find you so the more options the search engines have the better.

    Mike
  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 9/3/2008 at 12:35 PM Member
    They are not what they used to be as far as importance, but you have to do everything possible, and that includes paying attention to meta tags -- on each page.

  • Posted on 9/3/2008 at 12:44 PM Member
    Google entirely stopped using meta tags in 2001 (I don't know whether Yahoo, MSN, etc still use them), and I don't use them at all anymore-- they're not even on my site. I built a sitemap and submitted it to all the major search engines instead, and it's working great.
  • Posted by excellira on 9/3/2008 at 12:49 PM Member
    The kewyord meta tag has been, from the perspective of the major SE's, deprecated. You can skip that one without concern. You should not skip the meta description or the title tag (not technically a meta tag but typically grouped into them during on-page optimization discussion).

    While the meta description does not provide search engine ranking value it is vitally important to your organic search engine click throughs. If you query a search engine the search engine results page (SERP) typically lists the page title and meta description. If your meta description and title are well written you may earn a click even from a lower ranking position. Advertising 101. :-)

    The contents of the title tag is likely the most valuable ranking factor on a web page. And, to reiterate, they are important in the SERPs as well.

    It is difficult however to spend countless hours generating hand-written title and meta description tags on large-scale sites.

    If this is your situation then you will need to create well thought out rules for generating them automatically. If not, the best approach is to start somewhere. A home page is a great place to begin since is the the most frequently visited page on most sites. In hierarchical fashion, choose your next tier of important pages, make your changes, and so on and so on.

    Please keep in mind that "fixing" a top-ranked page could have an undesired effect.

    Regards,

    Greg Hill
    Trinity Search Engine Marketing
  • Posted by Annelies on 9/4/2008 at 3:33 AM Accepted
    My opinion: use them and use them right. Google cares enough about them to give you a detailed analyses in the webmastertools account. But as remarked by the others, this is just a small seo issue... sitemap is indeed more important and title is the most important on-page factor.

    Good luck!
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