Which meta tags do I use and which should I not?

There is a constant debate over which meta tags the search engines use when considering listing a certain page in their results pages. So how do you know who you should listen to and who you should ignore? Well that is not so easy, because no-one except the engineers working for the search engines know what they are looking for or not.

So what do I do with my meta tags?
Our suggestion is to use what you feel is necessary to define that page. The reason that meta tags became such a problem was because people were "stuffing" them with "keywords". What this means is if you were selling red cars your meta tags would only say red cars, red cars, red cars, etc. Although for a while this worked, it is now considered SPAM to "stuff" meta tags and/or page content.

A meta tag should be used for the purpose they were created. For example the eta description tags are just that; a description of what that page is about in 2-3 sentences. This is not a place to pitch your product or service and not a place to use your keywords as every other word. Should you use keywords at all in there? Yes, whenever it makes sense to do so you should use your keywords/phrases, but make sure it makes sense to the people who will be reading it (yes people do read the things you write on your website, it's not all just the search engines).

What happens if I use a meta tag that the search engines don't use?
As long as you aren't spamming or stuffing your meta tags then there should never be a problem. If they don't use that tag, then you just did a little extra work. Better yet, you may have done something before you had to! What I mean by that is the search engines are constantly changing what they look at to list a website, and there may come a time when that meta tag they aren't using now will actually be used. So you've just covered your bases.

Remember: Create for your visitors not for the search engines!

--------------
Ignite Media LLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization