I was recently reading a forum post on how one of the members said meta tag are worthless, and that they are no longer using them. Boy, is that bad advice, and I was reminded of how bad that advice was when I looked at a new clients site today. It was made entirely out of flash.

If You Use Flash You Must

First, take a look at Meso Design. Their site is all flash. Keyword content? Zero. When search engines index their site, the only information that they can get are from the meta tags. So if you do things in flash, this is the only reason you need to use meta tags. I know there is a bunch of hype on how Google can scan flash, but it’s just in its infancy, and only Google can do it. Besides figuring out what a site is about though, what else does a search engine do to your site? They list it in a search result.

Do You Want Your Description or A Computer’s Description?

So take a look at Meso’s product design site again. If you were a computer what part do you think we be used as the description of the site? The logo? The green header? Who knows.

Here is what Google came up with:

So how did Google come up with that? It’s in the Meta. By good fortune the developers of this site included the meta tags defining the sites description and title. Key value here is that it was a description they picked, not some computers pick.

Meta Tags Make Sales

Say what? It’s true, they do. Though Meso hasn’t taken advantage of it yet, they will. If you word your description right, you can turn it into an action item. Here is an example of something that is happening to the smart webmasters out there. They rank #5 for a popular keyword, but they get more hits from Google than the #1 spot result. Why? Is their site more relevant? Nope. It’s because they have  finely tuned their page description to not just describe the page, but to get visitors to act on it. They have turned their description into and advertisement, and it’s paying way better than if they simply ranked #1. Imagine what will happen when they get ranked #1. Out performing, out performing, out performing.

A Little Sample

Their are tons of sites out there that can help you develop quality meta tags, but I thought I would at least give you an example by showing you mine. Here is mine from my usability analysis page.

<title>Usability and Design Analysis</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Want to improve your website? Get my usability and design analysis. This analysis is an easy ROI, and could substantially improve your desired visitor action.” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”usability, usability and design, improve website, return on investment, usability analysis” />
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″ />
<meta name=”Author” content=”Best Web Image” />
<meta name=”copyright” content=”Best Web Image” />

Meso Design

For those of you that skim like many of you do, you may have guessed that Meso designs websites. They do not. They are product designers.