Līve Ambitions

I often get into heated discussions about this topic with colleagues and others in my profession.  My stance is that meta tag titles, descriptions and keywords are not as important as many make it out to be. 

I mean, think about it.  Meta tags are way too easy to manipulate.  Spammers have used it to their advantage because algorithms of the past gave too much credit to this data.  But, search engines have gotten smarter and more complex.  Gone are the days when you could easily rank top 10 simply because you plug in a bunch of keywords into the meta tag data.

Could you imagine if meta tags were weighed heavier into the algo?  We’d have all kinds of spammy sites ruling the top 10 rankings – such as porn or gambling sites showing up for “pet supplies” or “computer store”. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying meta tags are obsolete.  I definitely think it helps to some degree.  For example, it would be the deciding factor where two similar sites are competing for the same spot, but the one with the search query matching meta tag would outrank the other.