Should I use META tags?

I have no META tags at all right now. Is it any idea to use any META-tags at all these days?
Which tags should I use if I should use any?

Most important ones are

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en" />

...change them to meet your needs of course.

Next in line is the description meta:

<meta name="description" content="Enter a real good, concise and UNIQUE desciption of the page here.">

It's used sometimes by search engines to show as a snippet on the SE results pages...

But don't worry: if you leave them out the sky won't fall down

Answer is yes, if you want your page to be listed in the Search Engine results seriously.

Still, there are hundreds of sites which are top ranked for their excellent content.

If there is any particular thing in which your site specializes, like "software" using the keyword software is a good practise in the webpages.

May be these links will help you:
http://www.goodkeywords.com/
https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

I was telling only about the keywords right?
It is important that you also have a description tag.

For example. type the keyword arunai in google and see.
The first site listed in arunai.net
In the result, there is a 2 line description, which can be found no where in the site. Its nothing but the description tag in the site.

Also use Title seriously.

Good Luck.

Now I have added keywords and a description. I hope it's won't be waste of bandwidth. Anyway I don't think these META tags will give me very much but we'll see.

No it wont waste your bandwidth.

Also, include the tags which Wit suggested.

Good Luck.

My meta keywords even help my rankings. Sometimes they show up in my yahoo snippet. And yes...you definitely need the meta description.

Yes you should. It is a good practice to use friendly coding. You may cost yourself a slight edge in ranking for a target phrase also. Though it is a bigger pain than writing the content, it is important.


Cheers