Short answer: As far as SEO is concerned, probably not.
Simply put, there is no search engine rankings benefit in adding Meta Tags to your page. In ancient times, Keyword Meta Tags were used by the search engines to help rank pages for specific keywords. Keyword Meta Tags were taken advantage of by optimizers and spammers (I know, it’s shocking). Search Engines smartened-up and no longer use them in their algorithms.
Meta Tag Descriptions are mostly unnecessary too. If you have good keywords in your content, your description will be pulled directly from there. That content is always more relevant to the search than writing your own generic description for the entire page. A really great description will not have any effect on where that page will show up in search results, only the page content will… but it may help induce someone to click on it if they do happen to find it.
Meta Tags may harm your Search Engine Results. Yup, you read that last line right. If your description has nothing to do with your content, it will hurt your rank for the given keywords. Remember to keep your content relevant all the way around. If you’re targeting 2 keywords for a page, make sure they relate in some way, and that the page content is relevant to them as well.
Of course there are exceptions to every rule, and your mileage may vary. One example is a large site’s homepage. If you look at the homepage for CNN you’ll see that it has a bunch of stories that aren’t really related, but when you search Google or Yahoo for CNN, they want to control the blurb displayed under their main link, they do this using their meta description tag:
CNN.com delivers the latest breaking news and information on the latest top stories, weather, business, entertainment, politics, and more. For in-depth coverage, CNN.com provides special reports, video, audio, photo galleries, and interactive guides.
Not surprisingly, CNN wrote a smart meta description. They mention things that will always be on their homepage.
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