Confused about meta tags.

[NerdsOnCall]

(Ok, this might be a stupid question.) I am a little confused about the best practice for the Meta Tag. I know they don't have a real effect on ranking. But I am getting "mixed signals" as to their general use. I've pasted the 2 examples of below that are confusing me.

From my Campaign's Crawl Diagnostics: (I have missing Meta Tags)

"Meta description tags, while not important to search engine rankings, are extremely important in gaining user click-through from search engine result pages (SERPs). These short paragraphs are the webmaster's opportunity to advertise content to searchers and let them know exactly what the given page has with regard to what they're looking for"

From The Keyword Optimization Tool: (Avoid Using Meta Keyword Tool)

"Search engines have, for years, ignored the meta keywords tag as a ranking signal. Although it technically does not harm rankings, it can be used by competitors as a method to extract your targeted terms and thus, we recommend against its use. "

I would love to hear opinions on this topic. I am trying to decide wether or not to use unique meta tags on every blog post.

[NerdsOnCall]

Thanks guys. That answered my question!

[CarlosDuplar]

Meta Descriptions, when carefully written, may boost your clickthrough ratio in SERPs. Think of it as a kind of Adwords ad text.

Meta Keywords won't help you with anything, really. The only good usage I can recall is keyword suggestions to social bookmarking sites like Delicious.

[seanmccauley]

Meta Descriptions provide google with the text snippet shown in organic results therefore important.

Meta Keywords are no longer a ranking factor and in fact can be a disadvantage as they can give you competitors easy access to your keyword list therefore not only unimportant but a bad idea.

[DanSpeicher]

The first is talking about Meta Descriptions. The second is talking about Meta Keywords. Two completely different things.

Meta Descriptions are important. Meta Keywords are not.