Are meta tags still important?

[Karen]

Hi All,

A graphic designer friend of mine keeps mentioning that she's hearing
from different sources that meta tags are no longer important, for
example:

"Someone recently told me that metatags aren't even being picked up by
the spiders any more"

I've heard that description tags aren't that important for the SEs
(only for users) but that title tags are essential. Is this still
true? Maybe she's referring to the fact that link backs are so
important. But, I've heard that on-page factors make up about 25% of
the total picture and meta tags are part of that.

Any info/feedback?

Thanks much.

[Karen]

Anyone have any feedback about this?

[David Kyle]

Meta Keywords tag is ignored for ranking factors by Google.

Title and Description are important. Title is very much a backbone factor
for onsite SEO. Descriptions are important because it's what is usually
used as the info displayed in the SERPs. Lacing the descrption with
keywords helps show relavancy as they show bolded in the SERPs.

I usually tell my clients it makes up 20%, but understand these are both
guesstimations. No one really knows for sure, but it's reasonable to assume
links make up for the majority of the calculation.

David Kyle

[Karen]

Thanks for your feedback, David. That was my understanding also.

[Corey Creed]

I think the confusion was started because Yahoo announced that they no
longer use the Keyword meta tag. (No big deal. As David said, Google
hasn't for years.)

The announcement was reported on at...
http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-search-no-longer-uses-meta-keywords-tag-27303

However, it has also been found that Yahoo may not be telling the
whole truth. See...
http://searchengineland.com/sorry-yahoo-you-do-index-the-meta-keywords-tag-27743

I think that is what your friend may have heard and misunderstood.

Corey

[Chris]

Based on that post the Corey had the link to, if you had a client that
had content that was very technical or perhaps terms that only their
field would use, such as medical terms, would it be a good idea to put
either variations of these words or perhaps common misspellings of
them in the meta keywords?

On Oct 25, 9:01 pm, Corey Creed <coreycr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the confusion was started because Yahoo announced that they no
> longer use the Keyword meta tag.  (No big deal.  As David said, Google
> hasn't for years.)
>

> The announcement was reported on at...http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-search-no-longer-uses-meta-keywords...

>
> However, it has also been found that Yahoo may not be telling the

> whole truth. See...http://searchengineland.com/sorry-yahoo-you-do-index-the-meta-keyword...