I've setup a few sites in the past but I've always used the meta data to work my way up the rankings mostly. But I heard somewhere that it doesn't really help anymore, is that true? I mean how far can you get on keywords and descriptions alone depending on what you put in there. A lot of other ways to promote sites seem very time consuming, what's the best approach?

Originally Posted by graham08

I've setup a few sites in the past but I've always used the meta data to work my way up the rankings mostly.

If you worked your way up the rankings, it wasn't because of what you put in your meta description and keywords (unless we are talking about the good old spamming days of teh 90's). As far as I know, those meta tags have no influence on your ranking and if you are sufficiently interested in testing it for yourself, just put a nonsence word in there on a test page and once it's indexed see whether it ranks for it.

Originally Posted by graham08

what's the best approach?

Depends on what your criteria for 'best' are. What about paid advertising?

Well IMO, it is STILL part of the on-page optimization process... It wouldn't hurt a bit putting some right?

Yeah thats true there's no harm in putting the keywords/meta data in, but just how much time should you really be spending on it in comparison to anything else that can boost your sites hits and rankings?

two posts in this thread is too much time already.

I don't know how keywords affect ranking. I just know that to rank high, the content has to interest webcrawlers, and the SEO must be right. I simply write what can a visitor can find info about in the keywords.

I recently worked on a scene archive site, doing php and seo. I got the site to rank 7th in google just searching for the platform, and #1 by googling for platform+demoname.

</brag> :P