Question

Topic: SEO/SEM

How Important Are Key Words And Meta Tags?

Posted by Anonymous on 4/23/2010 at 10:20 PM ET 25 Points
Hi,

The woman that developed my new Wordpress blog/site didn't include a plug in for meta tags and key words. She says that the content is more important and that I don't need them.

Is this a correct statement, is one more important than the other or do I need both?

Thanks!
Leslie Guria
SpeakingBonanza.com
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 4/23/2010 at 10:23 PM Accepted
    She is absolutely INCORRECT.

    The meta description tag is very important for SEO. It is the description most engines, including Google, use for the description for your site once it is ranked. So why not write a compelling description, since you can control that? As a marketer, I think that's a huge opportunity.

    Also, MarketingSherpa did a study a few years back showing that when the keyword the person searched appeared in the description of the ranking, the ranking received a higher click rate (likely because the keyword is bolded in the text). Isn't that what we all want?

    I recommend using the All in One SEO Pack. Allows you to easily edit your Title, Description and Keywords tag for each post for SEO purposes.
  • Posted by excellira on 4/24/2010 at 1:14 AM Accepted
    I'm not a fan of the meta keyword tag. It gives away competitive intelligence without any benefit.

    I agree with Jmiller that the all in one seo pack is a good plugin for this requirement and that the meta description is a vital component to search performance.

    The all in one seo pack also provides the ability to override the title tag.
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 4/24/2010 at 9:57 AM Accepted
    Read: https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-key...

    Also - what is your analytics now showing. Are you getting traffic? Inquiries? If you're getting traffic but no inquiries, tweak your content. If you're not getting traffic, then focus on SEO efforts to improve it (backlinks, etc.).
  • Posted on 4/24/2010 at 10:58 AM Author
    Thank you to all of you. I was truly miffed that I didn't have the ability to add meta tags/descriptions to my pages. The video and HubSpot links are very helpful. Does it make sense to pay for HubSpot for a while?

    Thanks!
  • Posted on 4/24/2010 at 11:36 AM Moderator
    It depends on what your objective is, doesn't it?
  • Posted on 4/24/2010 at 11:49 AM Author
    The objective is to market my new site online. Would that make it a yes?
  • Posted on 4/24/2010 at 11:57 AM Accepted
    When you say, " ... market my new site online ..." do you mean you want to sell stuff to site visitors, or you want to attract visitors so they can click on AdSense ads while they're there?

    Is the primary objective to generate traffic, or is it to sell something? It makes a difference. If you want to sell something, then you're probably better served working on your advertising (to get people to the site) and your landing path experience.

    My experience has been that SEO is great for long-term planning, but that most of the time you want to sell stuff now. SEO doesn't do that, so it has the potential to suck resources from the things that will allow you to achieve your objective. Of course, it's nice if you can afford to invest enough to do both, but when you have limited resources (time and money), you need to set priorities.
  • Posted on 4/24/2010 at 12:26 PM Author
    Thanks again! Generate traffic. I'm going to be doing otter "stuff" to sell specific products. People don't specifically look for what I'm selling. They don't know it exists or that they need it. BUT, if they're surfing and they find me, it will get the wheels turning and eventually they may buy or refer me. Most of my business comes from referrals, the web is secondary. I've got a decent bait piece that will get them into my marketing funnel. I'm going to be promoting that in a few different ways.
  • Posted by excellira on 4/24/2010 at 5:56 PM Member
    "My experience has been that SEO is great for long-term planning, but that most of the time you want to sell stuff now. SEO doesn't do that, so it has the potential to suck resources from the things that will allow you to achieve your objectives."

    My experience is that SEO may actually save many new online businesses because the cost per acquisition is about the lowest in the marketing industry and the ROI is about the highest.

    A client's needs should be assessed before making a recommendation. If the client's strategy is based on search then this could be the worst bit of advise I've seen in these forums.
  • Posted by Jatinder Thind on 5/22/2010 at 3:15 AM Member
    All major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) completely ignore meta tags during searches. Meta tag were important in the early 90's back but are redundant nowadays.

    Meta description tag still has some use in that Google sometimes displays the description tag while listing pages in search results. However they don't use the description tag for search results ranking.

    Keywords tag is completely ignored.

    Search engine results depend on the following factors (ordered in increasing importance):

    1. Semantic HTML structure - CSS based layouts, header tags, image alt tags etc.

    2. Content - The more content the better. Of course, it has to be relevant, unique and hight quality.

    3. Incoming links - The more incoming links to your website the better.
  • Posted by excellira on 5/22/2010 at 9:04 PM Member
    Thought not technically a meta element the title tag is often grouped into discussions on the subject. Though it is likely the most important on-page ranking signal and should not be ignored.

    The meta description can be picked up by Google and other SEs and listed as the snippet in the search engine results pages. Google in particular may alternately select a more relevant selection of text if it better matches the search query. However, it is believed to be helpful in establishing context. Whether you buy into that theory or not, it is very helpful to get them right.

    Also, Google claims to ignore the keyword meta element though though not all other search engines do though this should not be construed as an endorsement of its use (see my earlier post).
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