Is the Meta Tag really dead or is it simply an underestimated form of marketing a website? While a great many search engine gurus will tell you that the Meta Tags are useless; when they are used properly, they can be a very effective tool and help to increase page rank and the placement in the search engines results page.
If you look at the basic “default” Meta Tags which are included in most html editors, they really do not contain much useful information at all. It is foolish to think that these most basic of meta tags which provide little more than the character set used, can really be useful for promoting anything. Likely, they will not be useful for very much at all.
Advanced Meta Tags are an entirely different approach to the same problem however and do offer very real and tangible benefits. Even with the new Latent Semantic Indexing that the search engine algorithms are just now starting to get, they need to know that the site is going to be consistent and specifically in regards to the subject matter at hand.
Additionally, such inclusions as page title, content and descriptions are often the only part of your page that will be seen on a search engine results page. If the search engine you are using includes no more than that and you are not using the advanced tags than you will have nothing to show on the SERP. These small snippets can be used to generate an actual need or create a sense of desire for people to visit your site.
Rather than leaving out this information entirely, try using it on some of the pages that are already ranked on your site. If you know their current positions and keep an eye on them over the course of a few days or a week, you are probably going to see a noticeable improvement in their rankings among the different search engines. While these Meta Tags alone will not insure you a number one spot or even a front page return, any increase at all on the SERP is a good thing.
If you are concerned about SEO or SEM and want to be able to actually profit from your web site, it may be a viable option to take the five additional minutes and create these tags. If you are capable of generating them manually, that is fine but with everything that is available, there is no excuse for any web page not to have these listed.
If you are already getting good traffic to your site without using them, that is great and I wish you nothing but the best.
However, if you can do well without them, what if you could do just a little bit better with them? This is not a get rich scheme but it is not rocket science either. This is simply utilizing a free tool in order to generate more interest in your web site and a better placement on the SERP.
If you want, there are many people who are more than happy to charge you anywhere from a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars each and every month (or more if you want me) to fully optimize your site.