They are very important, for a variety of reason. You should also include the description meta tag in this group.

You can read more here: Why Page Titles Are So Important For SEO

One thing this article did not touch on is how the information from these tags are used in google search results and when people share your content on their social networking sites.

In Google search results the Big Blue Heading link is the content from your title tag, and the description text is from your description meta tag—if the description tag is absent or the content is not representative to what’s on the page google will improvise using text from the page.

In Social media ideally you have included open graph meta tags to instruct what title and description to use, but fallback would be page title and description.

These tags are important in not only communicating to search engines, but also to humans. They should include keywords if possible, but ultimately you should focus on text that entices the viewer into wanting to ready more.

@supereb @juleswebb, well put.

@juleswebb @supereb @johnkelly

Oooops – sorry to have upset you guys. My apologies to you all!

note – the most stunning page titles/meta descriptions will not compensate for poor on page content. Circling the discussion back to social media I’m assuming the original question was referring to Google. With Microsoft owning a small stake in Facebook and MS programmers having hacking pajama parties at Facebook I’m seeing a lot of emphasis on social Media signals that Bing is seeking.  So as a caveat to @E N Brown s eloquent answer, what holds true for Google does not for Bing. I have a boatload of KW’s on page one of Google that do not do nearly as well on Bing.  I was at a conference at MS headquarters in Chicago a couple of weeks ago and asked the question at the front desk who there could I have a chat with to better understand “social signals” Bing keeps talking about seeking – the human search results produced a “we’ll get back to you” So keep working on that Meta data but I believe we’re going to see a whole new set of signals that Bing will need to see and it won’t be titles and meta data – think Open graph search - on Bing – just a guess

HI @mitch-rezman —  I agree that Google is not the only search engine. I have a hard time trying to convince my clients that the sun does not rise and set on Google alone – you make good points regarding that issue and thanks for the update.

Hi @ricoramiro — I tried to not go much deeper with my comments but you are certainly right when it comes to the ‘h’ tags.

Eileen

@rajasbanquet

I for one welcome your SEO questions! Especially since blog posts are just web pages, and you can’t take the SEO out of social media any more than you can take the cream out of the coffee.

And while there are twice as many opinions on SEO, I have heard from a very well placed person that Google only gives extra weight to H1 tags, no others.

I find this hard to believe myself, so I just use my best judgment on creating content that makes the most sense for my end user.

HI @mitch-rezman – Good article.

Hi @rich-brooks – On the h2-h6 tags: yes, but Google is not the only search engine. This is where I differ from a lot of other SEO folks. 

Remember there is life in all the search engines. I mean ‘what if’ your sales from Bing or Yahoo are only 10% but those 10% percent turn out to be your best repeat customers? 

Follow Google closely but don’t forget (even though they ARE the biggest AD agency on the planet) there are other fish in the sea too. People spend so much time keeping up with Google’s antics as regards SERP’s they often forget that millions of folks use other SEs. Yes, millions. 

.02

Eileen  

PS – (Not to be argumentative; I swear)