Gilly & meta tags
The interested thing about team blogs is that it gives team members the opportunity to discuss different view points in a public forum.
Gilly Challinor has just put together an excellent post on meta tags, and it’s definitely worth a read. Here’s the bottom line though; meta descriptions are useful for steering Google on the page description it displays in its results. Meta keywords are completely redundant and should be avoided.
If you don’t put any meta tags in at all, Google will approximate the site description from the site content. If your site is well constructed, has intelligent content that is Google friendy, this description *should* make sense. For my money, I’d drop meta tags altogether.
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2 Responses to “Gilly & meta tags”
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It’s an interesting point and YES I agree that META keywords are a bit of a waste of time, however I wouldn’t proclaim the end of keywords completely.
Tags are an essential part of the semantic web that the current phase of new media productions seem to be leaning toward.
Tagging a story or feature will become an essential way of finding content in a mashed up, mixed up world.
Think Technorati, Digg and Flickr and you’ll begin to see why these tags are so important.
Ryan: thanks for taking the time to write.
Your blog: Up Your Ego is definitely worth a read.
My comments were in ref to SEO, but you’re right, for the wider purposes of social networking, tagging is essential for profiled content to reach profiled audiences. But these tags are awarded by impartial readers, not by content authors, and that’s a critical difference.