‘If It Does No Harm’ Argument

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, 9 of September , 2008 at 6:16 am

There are times when forums provide for interesting conversations, even if you sit back and eavesdrop on others. This last week has seen an interesting conversation on WebMasterWorld on how keywords and duplication in Meta data can impact optimization.

I say interesting because what started as a fairly innocuous question wound up with a long conversation that did deviate a little. I had to reread it all two or three times to find an answer to the original question.

The conversation in the thread seemed to follow three sub-threads. Keyword meta tags, duplicate meta tags and duplicate content within meta tags and how each affected your SEO for Google and Yahoo!. From the conversation, it seemed the consensus was, don’t worry, ‘if it does no harm’ leave it in.

I don’t quite agree with that concept and I was pleased to see others add their views. Meta tags don’t hold the same importance to SEO that they once did. That is not to say they don’t hold any importance at all, they are still an important on site element.

The description tag is important since search engines rely on that information in the snippet that is displayed with the search results. From your own marketing perspective, it should be considered very important. The keyword meta tag is still used by Yahoo! although no one knows for sure what sort of weight it holds. From an search engine optimization perspective, it doesn’t appear to harm your rankings and may have a slight influence on Yahoo!

Having said it holds little importance to SEO; if it is abused, for example, stuffed with the same keyword 50 times, then it is possible that search engines may either ignore it or add a penalty - again, the jury is out on that and no one knows for sure.

In reality, Meta tags have a very low significance when it comes to SEO and search rankings (other than the title tag, which is still very important). Never the less, you should always make sure you Meta data is clear, reflects the page and provides information that may accurately help the search engines index your page. If you can manage that aspect, you need not fear the search engine penalties.

                      Category: Meta Tags                      

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