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Meta tags are important because they impact how your site appears in the SERPs and how many people will be inclined to click through to your website. They will therefore impact your traffic and engagement rates, which can impact your SEO and rankings. Meta tags are an important part of a solid SEO strategy.
At least for Google’s web search results currently (September 2009), the answer is no. Google doesn’t use the keywords meta tag in our web search ranking. This video explains more, or see the questions below.
How do I choose meta keywords for SEO?
The most important thing to keep in mind when selecting or optimizing your meta keywords is to be sure that each keyword accurately reflects the content of your pages. It’s no good hauling in traffic with keyword phrases like “Low-Rate Mortgage” and “Find a Divorce Lawyer” if your site sells cooking supplies.
By using meta tags, you can make sure browsers and search engines behave as you want them to, and display your content in SERPs according to your preferences. Learn about the most important meta tags for SEO: meta title, meta description, meta robots and what other tags are commonly mistaken for meta tags!
Remove the robots meta tag from any pages that should be indexed. To find pages with rogue meta robots nofollow tags, crawl the site with Ahrefs’ Site Audit and check the Indexability report for “Nofollow page” warnings. Remove the tag unless you specifically want search engines not to crawl the links on the page.
How does meta description affect search engine rankings?
Well, in theory, meta descriptions do not affect SEO. This is an official statement from Google, released in 2009. However, since meta descriptions show in the search engine results, they can affect CTRs (click through rates), which are linked to SEO & rankings.
Think of your page code as a set of step-by-step directions to get somewhere, but for a browser. Extraneous meta tags are the annoying “Go straight for 200 feet” line items in driving directions that simply tell you to stay on the same road you’re already on! These are the meta tags that should be on every page, no matter what.