Meta tags - Yes they are still used!

As a quick reminder I just want to go over meta tags. As a veteran with web sites I remember the early days of web design and search engines. Meta tags were the most important SEO tip out there. 'Hey I want to be #1 for Maryland injury lawyers', 'Ok just put in Maryland injury lawyer in your meta tags about a million times, oh yeah and be sure to put in paragraph after paragraph repeating those words over and over.'

Thank god those days are over. However meta tags aren't totally dead. Google's Webmaster tools gives you a lot of great resources and troubleshooting tips for your web site. One of them centers around your meta tags. Each page should have unique keyword and description meta tags. Don't worry if your pages are not all unique its ok - however the best practice is that each page does in fact have unique meta tags. Before you right click on this page I can save you the time - all mine are not unique.

It's still good pratice so if you have a big important site you are working on, it may not be a bad idea and check.

There's a bit of debate on the best format for meta keywords. I personally feel they should be a small number and contain one word followed by a comma. For example

This says first things first we are in Maryland. My law clients typically only practice law in one state. So the most important thing we want is location. Secondly we want Google (and the other search engines) to know that my client is a lawyer. From there we go into other details such as 'personal injury'. I would say a good number would be between 7 and 10 keywords. Please for the love of god do not spam it - it won't work. I also recommend not using whole phrases such as

No! One word, followed by a comma then another word. Simple tip but it helps.