The Myth of the Magical Meta Tag

I get asked several times a week by insurance agents how they get their website to show up better in search results. After talking through the elements of search engine optimization with them for a few minutes, they inevitably ask me about meta tags. “Can’t I just put a bunch of keywords in my meta tags and show up on the first page of Google?”

The answer is simple: No!

If that were all it took, we’d all be on the first page of search results for every keyword we could dream of (and it would be a very, very long first page). But the question keeps coming up.

So to dispel the myth of the magical meta tag for once and for all, I present the 2009 SEOmoz Search Engine Ranking Factors Survey, hot off the press. SEOmoz surveyed the world’s top SEO consultants on what factors are most important for ranking. And guess what?

The Meta Keyword Tag ranks very last on the list, with 5% relevance. Even simply putting your keyword in italics ranks higher, with 21% relevance.

If you do one thing to help your site show up better with search results, I recommend starting at the top of the list: put your keywords in your page titles. Insurance Agents that have created their sites with us can do this easily by editing the ‘browser title’ in the manage content section.