SEO and Website Design Without Metas: Not on My Account

I had always thought that a web page having at least 2 META tags in the HEAD section: namely description and keywords, was such a fundamental of SEO, so basic, so longstanding and so necessary that surely everyone involved with SEO or website building would know about them. In my opinion they should not only know about them, they should know how essential they are to good SEO results, and also know how to use them properly.

I am now realising that this is not the case, and that even some so called professionals are not making proper use of meta data.

For any writers, bloggers or people new to website use who don't know what meta data is, I am not getting at you. This is purely aimed at those charging money when they obviously don't know what they are doing

To my knowledge there isn't one website in a good position in Google without a meta description and meta keyword tags -- I challenge anyone to find one.

I will be giving a full explanation of what meta tags are, what they do and how to use them in my new Ebook due out next week. Request your free copy of SEO Basics From Head to Toe: The Building Blocks of SEO.

A few months ago, a friend told me all about their new website, created and built by a professional web designer. But it turned out that, 'professional' in this case was only in the fact that they were charging good money; making a living from web design services.

For a start the layout was done with tables and I'm pretty sure it came from a free template because of the class names, but that is another issue; one that I could easily have let go.

What I couldn't let go, was the fact that there were no meta keywords and no meta descriptions on any of the pages. What was worse was when I explained to my friend how necessary they were, the designer then set up a PHP include -- the full metas; tags and data stored in one file that is referenced by all the pages -- so that my friend could easily edit the metas.

The designer failed to see the problem in the fact that this would make all pages have identical meta descriptions and identical keywords -- other than the fact that this would flag errors in Google Webmaster Tools, it was a complete waste of time having them, unless every page covered the same subject.

At that point I gave up. This didn't change my mind about everyone knowing about meta tags for SEO. And then today, I was looking at another site that I know was designed and built by a professional website design and creation company.

Not only did it not have description and keyword metas, but the title tag did not contain any of the site's targeted keywords -- I couldn't believe it. At that point I was compelled to write this article.

Anyone who wants to know more about what meta tags are, and how they are a vital part of SEO should enter their email address below to receive a free copy of my new SEO basics ebook next week.

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