The consensus in the search engine optimization community these days is that meta tags are dead, dead, dead. It is widely thought that most (if not all) search engines place little direct value in meta tags as a sole path to high rankings, and many webmasters and SEO practitioners often advocate not wasting time with meta tags as a part of a search engine optimization strategy.

In the immortal words of Susan Powter - “Stop the insanity!!”

Meta tags are not dead. In and of themselves, meta tags do not offer the bang for the buck they once did. But they are, and should continue to be, an integral part of every comprehensive search engine optimization strategy.

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Often times search engine optimization specialists will spend a great deal of effort trying to research and choose the right keywords for their optimization strategies.

After optimizing the keywords, code, content, and plethora of other on and off-site elements, the fun begins! The strategy is rolled out and ranking analysis takes over. Depending on how often/frequent the engines spider the site, chances are that the hard work has paid off and ranking improvements follow.

Being the ever vigilant search marketer, we know that ranking high does not always equate to higher volumes of traffic. So, turning to the analytics tool of choice, it’s evident that some of the newly acquired rankings are driving higher levels of traffic.

At this point, the cycle begins again. Research, implement, measure. Or, as we like to call it - wash, rinse, repeat.

After a few more wins (more high rankings, and increases in traffic) and several more wash, rinse, repeat cycles, you’ve made some gains, but the big breakthrough has yet to appear. What next?

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And….we’re back!

We recently rolled out a brand spanking new Azul 7 website - officially version 1.  Feel free to take a quick peek, but don’t get too attached.  Version 2 will be coming before the end of the year….