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Meta Keywords Tag Be Gone!
Published on Mar 10, 2009
Last week I spoke with a potential client, and while discussing his current website he mentioned that he was undergoing an extensive effort to review and update all the meta keywords across his ebsite. What I told him and what I will tell you is this: stop wasting your time with the meta keywords tag.
What is the meta keywords tag?
The meta keywords tag resides behind the scenes in the code of your website. It is not visible to people coming to your website. In the code it looks like this:
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword one, keyword two, keyword three" />
In the early days of the internet the meta keywords tag played a prominent role in getting a website ranked highly in search engines. Back then search engines relied heavily on the meta keywords tag to determine what keywords a website should be ranked for.
However, over time, unethical website folks started cramming keywords that were not related to the content of a website to increase website traffic. It wasn’t long before search engines put far less emphasis on the meta keywords tag because of this. Today no major search engine relies on the meta keywords tag at all.
Put plainly, spending any time working with your meta keywords tag is time wasted.
If not the meta keywords tag ... where?
Today search engines ignore the meta keywords tag and focus solely on the content of the a given web page. The logic here is simple. If the keywords aren’t in the content then it’s not worth being included in the search results. So, rather than spending time writing (or even worse, revising) your meta keywords tag focus instead on working those keywords into the content of your website.
Yes, the meta keywords tag once played a pivotal role in your website but that time has come and gone.
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