Meta tags, are they even worth it any more?
 

Should I still spend time on writing meta tags on my pages for meta search engines?

I've just found optimizing the text on my galleries to be most effective.

but honestly I suck at the SE thing :)

Ask jojojo

Yes it's still worth it to make meta tags, it only takes a few minutes and some SE's still use them.

The only engines that will ever bring you traffic do not use meta tags anymore.

The meta tags you should consider using are:

Description tag ? some engines, including Google, will sometimes use the description tag in their results page. This is a bonus if you have a GOOD description tag that can bring people in.

Keyword tag ? no real engine uses this tag anymore, but you can put one in anyways. Keep it brief, maybe like 10-15 keywords

Copyright tag ? not for the engines, but for the ?view source? people, optional, since assholes will swipe your stuff regardless

So I gather title tag and "alt" are useless now?

i have a pr 5 used to be 6

Actualy, tittle is a VERY important tag. Google loves it. Almost all of my google listings use my title tag. Alt is great too, if the robots can't find enough text they start looking at alt tags.

The title tag and h1 tags are certainly the most important pieces of a document, while metadata is given little weight, according to google. I'd definately keep writing the meta tags though, as other engines still use them, and you never know which up n'comer will give them weight. Shit it only takes a couple seconds to throw up a metatag.

my rule - if it doesn't hurt my listenng I do it. Make yourself a meta tag template in a text file and just adapt it each time and it takes minutes. Alt tags as well..if they don't hurt then why not do them?

oh jesus

Inktomi and Google both use the meta description tags in some occasions (not rare in fact). I heard that the meta keyword tag is useless.

Considering these are the 2 major SEs to cater to in the short run, I would definitely take the time to craft some good ones - especially if you consider that Inktomi will give greater weight to pages that have a better clickthrough rate (weird but true!) - and of course that Yahoo will "probably" start relying on Inktomi some time in the near future (instead of Google).

I agree, the more ingrediants in the soup the better the taste, the extra effort now may pay off later when the SE's change their algorythms again and again and again.

You are so right Lee. Stuff will show up in the engines that were coded a year or so ago. You never know when your work can pay off, right?

Mitch