11 replies to this topic

[Devon]

Hello All,

I think this is a great site with a ton of valuble information & I'm very glad to have become a member today. It also seems like many of you are here to help the newbies get started & I think thats Great! Please don't slaughter me for asking this here.

I'll ask the question this way. Why do some pages WITHOUT Meta tags etc... get #1 rankings on searches.
I wish I had an example but I'm sure many have noticed.
I have even seen #1 spots with no page titles on it. How is this possible?
Is it better sometimes to leave all the Meta tags out on some pages?

Thanks for all responses.
Have a good day!

-Dev

[Jill]

Because the keyword meta tag has nothing to do with rankings.

Please see the tons of other posts on this, as well as read our Tips for Newbies.

[MichaelM]

Meta tags aren't overly important now. I would never leave them out though, just incase it has some small benefit.

The page title is very important though, so I would never recommend leaving that out.

If sites have gotten to the top without those, then I would say that they must have some great content, which has gotten them a lot of external links to boost them to the top. Honestly, it sounds like they're just there by luck, and have never actually considered SEO. Don't try and do it that way. It's harder.

[incrediblehelp]

Because In-Bound Links and the anchor text in those links is one of the most powerful rankings factors for most search engines.

[Jill]

Most powerful?

I disagree.

There is no *most* powerful. All SEO factors work together to provide power. Links are certainly not the most powerful, nor more powerful than many other SEO techniques such as Title tags.

[incrediblehelp]

I understand and agree combinations of many factors lead to great traffic and rankings, but I must admit I seen a lesser amount of websites perform great without links and only great on-site optimization. While I see more websites perform great with lots of links and little on-site optimization. To me this is clearly true and can been seen in the SERPs. Just my opinion.

[Savieo]

I think they have the combinations of:

1) Fresh Content
2) Relevant Information as per visitor's search query
3) Quality Back Links
4) Optimized Anchor Texts

Meta Tags might not be that important but it is always better to have. You can earn some benefits.
But Title Tags are very important. Just imagine a article without title. In the same way a piece of paper with lines after lines without title. In the same way a web page without title - NO.

[Devon]

Thanks All!

[parusa619]

Because the keyword meta tag has nothing to do with rankings.

Please see the tons of other posts on this, as well as read our Tips for Newbies.

Agreed, I just saw the results from our pages and I think that having an aged but indexed website may have to do with rankings.

[giorgoc]

answer is simple.

Today's search engines are using their own secret algorithm for assigning a ranking to a website. META tags cannot be included within the criteria any more since almost everybody knows about them and competition does not exist into this area. However you may still use them because they won't harm - but also they can help make a search engine understand easier what's your website about and hence easier to gain relevancy which is really important!

[redsonia!]

Welcome to the forum, Devon and giorgoc!

[chrishirst]

answer is simple.

Today's search engines are using their own secret algorithm for assigning a ranking to a website. META tags cannot be included within the criteria any more since almost everybody knows about them and competition does not exist into this area. However you may still use them because they won't harm - but also they can help make a search engine understand easier what's your website about and hence easier to gain relevancy which is really important!

So what you are saying there is

Don't use meta elements because SEs don't use them but you should include the meta elements because SEs do use them ???