Web Promotion I was compelled to publish this article after noticing several SEO specialists writing in reference to meta tags being dead or obsolite. Meta tags are not dead. I will be the first to say, meta tags are utilized by all major search engines and are very much in use and extremely important to search engine ranking. If you need proof of how important meta tags are, try removing your meta tags and watch what happens to your search engine positioning. Your site will plummet to the depths of the unvisited web. Meta tags are frequently an overlooked factor which can improve the ranking of most any website. This is an example of how vital meta tags are to your webpage and to your search engine ranking. Our website ranks #6 and #7 consistantly on MSN for the keyword submit site. To test the dead meta tag theory, our source code editor changed one word in the meta description tag and we dropped to #15 in the search results. Our rankings on Google and several other search engines suffered even more so. Needless to say we made changes accordingly. All major search engines definitely utilize meta tags for a description of the webpage and for indexing within the search results. Business - List of business/finance/loan/mortgage resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Computers - List of computer hardware/software/peripheral resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Internet - List of webhosting/webdesign/internet marketing resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Software - List of software resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Web Design - List of web design/development resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Web Hosting - List of web hosting resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Web Promotion - List of search engine optimization/internet marketing resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Web Resources - List of other web resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Recreation - List of travel/hotel/cruise resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Casino - List of online gambling/poker/blackjack/roulette resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Health - List of online pharmacy/hospital/health resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Shopping - List of online shopping/gift resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Miscellaneous - List of all other resources not stated above more 1 2 3 4 5   Search engine spiders read the description meta tag next. This tag is often used as a website description in the search results. The description tag should also contain a few keywords. The keyword meta tag is also vital to search engine ranking giving search engine spiders a sample of relevant text and content within a webpage. Other meta tags include robots, resource, author, copyright etc. These tags are not as important as the title, description and keyword tag, however they should be included if possible. To acheive high search engine ranking optimize your meta data. Proper onpage optimization will greatly improve your search engine placement.