It may surprise you to know that all so-called SEOs don’t agree on everything!

There’s an awful lot of talk about whether meta tags are still relevant or not. I read a lot of SEO blogs and articles and continually see SEOs ranting and raving about whether Google, Yahoo, and Bing use the meta description and other meta tags as part of their ranking algorithm or not.

My take? I say it doesn’t matter! Who cares whether Google uses the meta description as a ranking factor (they don’t, by the way). Are you going to stop using the meta description tag based on this knowledge? I should hope not.

Your meta description tag is a big part of your overall site content strategy. It contains the text (copy) that actually appears under your web page’s title in the search engine results. (See example below.)

A well-written meta description and title can make all the difference in the world as to whether someone clicks on your link as opposed to someone elses. Think about it. Look at the example listings above for the keyword “trek mountain bikes”. Which one is more enticing to you? Which one would you click on?

Optimizing things like your page title, description, headings, sub-headings and alt text is important whether they are part of the search engine’s ranking algorithm or not. They tell people and the search engines what your web page or blog is all about.

They matter! They matter a lot!

Agree, disagree? I’m interested to know what you think.

Tagged as: search engine advertising, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo tips

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