If you want to do a really good job at doing the right stuff for your website, then don’t use Metatag generators or even worse On the fly Plugins or Mambots  that create Metatags stuff for you.

They might seem a good idea and if you really don’t have the time, or the knowledge to do proper Search Engine Optimization, then use a Metatags generator.

You can find several good once at the Joomla extensions site.
You can also find some “on the fly� Metatags generators, who change everything for you, if you change a few of the first lines of your page.

Here is why I don’t link to use them:
- They are not as good as you in creating good titles
- They are not as good as you in giving a good an well thought through Description of the content of the page
- They are just stuffing some keywords in the keyword tag, and you still have to change them for maximum results.

Joomla Metatag generator components

With Metatag Generators components, you database is filled in the right places, and you can mostly edit the tags, either on the page meta-info tab itself, or in the generator pages.
OpenSef comes with such an Metatag Generator included in the SEO Assistant tab.
Also the Metatags generator of iJoomla works well.

For both generators I suggest you set the options in the configuration fields to NOT overwrite the already filled in Metatag fields.

If you have a large website with multiple editors that don’t know how to write Metatags information, it will be a valuable extensions.
But if you run your own site, don’t use them, think for yourself. You are the expert on your sites topic.

On the Fly SEO ?

There are several Plugins that create “on the fly Metatags�.
What they do is basically read the first positions from the text area of your page and take that as the title, and mostly some more lines to create a description Metatag.
With the words included in the text the keywords are extracted.

For some people it will work great, less effort, and instant results…..

What I don’t like about it is that you don’t have control over the more important parts, it overwrites all you previous work.

But should you call this Search Engine Optimization for you Joomla Site?
Or are you just fooling yourself and taking the easy road?

Search Engine Optimization is more than just letting a program work some stuff into some fields for you.

You have to do research on Keywords, Optimize you text, site structure and more, and that is hard work!
Just running a Plugin or component might look nice to you now, but will it last in the long run and will it provide the right Search Engine Results you are after?

Want to read more? Check out Joomla & SEO Blog.