Meta Tags - To Use or Not To Use

Back in the day meta keywords and meta descriptions were a very important aspect of Search Engine Optimization. You needed to have the right combination in order to get your site to rank well for specific terms; but are they still just as important today as they were then? With search engine algorithms changing and continously improving, some say no they are not important and others say yes. So what's the real answer? It's both, let me explain. In some search engines Meta tags do not make a difference. The search engine gathers their information from the title of the page and the actual page content. Other search engines still use this data for their descriptions etc. So how do you make sure you are giving the search engines what they need to index your site properly? Well simply put, use the meta tags. You are not going to get penalized for using them by search engines that don't rely on them; they will simply be bypassed during the crawl, but at the same time you are giving the search engines that do use them the needed information.