Submitted by Helen on May 24, 2009 - 2:41pm
There is one question that I am frequently asked by new people I meet which I have to admit, makes me want to roll my eyes, just a little.
That question is - "should I use the meta-keywords tag?" Or sometimes, "how many keywords should I put in my meta-keywords tag?"
The short answer to this question is: Don't.
The meta-keywords tag will not, as of this writing, help you rank for the keywords placed in it. Once upon a time at the dawn of the Internet it helped, but that was over 10 years ago, and in Internet time that's what... 1,000 years?
Maybe that's a little blunt, but there are few widely-accepted facts in the art and science of SEO, and this is one of the biggies.
The follow-up question to this short and succinct answer is, "Well, what if the engines have started using it again?" This is a reasonable question, and all reasonable questions deserve a reasonable answer. The latest test I was involved in to see if the meta-keywords tag helped with ranking was Spring 2008. At that time, we found that not only did the meta-keywords tag not help us rank in Google and MSN, but that it also had no measureable effect on rankings in Yahoo.
For anyone harboring a lingering suspicion that the meta-keyword tag might indeed still work, you can read this very thorough analysis of the meta-keywords tag and it's history.
Can the Meta-Keywords Tag Be Helpful?
Yes, absolutely! Whenever we are performing keyword research for clients at my work, we frequently check out the competitors meta-keywords tags to see what they are targeting. It's very helpful, and let me give a big shout out to all of you who have made our job a little easier.
Photo by cambodia4kidsorg
Based on your tests and some recent experiences I've had, I have found the Keywords meta tag of some minor value still in Yahoo.
While not a significant change in ranking I have seen some changes (1 or 5 positions) and sometimes that's enough to move the client to page 1 from page 2.
I find it all depends on how many links exist to a page and to the site in general. The more links the less impact this tag seems to have.
For most clients I don't bother with the tag at all, unless I can see from their analytics reports and their user demographics that Yahoo (and the Yahoo family of web sites) is a major or potentially major contributor of organic search traffic.
I haven't done any scientific tests, just some basic observations.
You couldn't have put it any more clear than this. I used to be absolutely convinced that meta tags are important for search engines until a recent site building tutorial mentioned about meta tags as not important. I was confused after that and now I read this. Thanks, you really shred some light here.
Samm, Chicago seo
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