Meta Keywords Tag – Should You Still Use It?

As you might know Google has stopped using the meta keywords tag long time ago (since 2009).

So the question is, what is the best SEO practice when it comes to using the meta keywords tag? Based on my research, there are 3 groups of SEO professionals out there that support three different practices.

Three opinions – how to use meta keywords tag?

1) Keep using the meta keywords tag – stuff it with keywords baby! Even though Google has stopped using it, Bing and Yahoo still use it as one of the many signals to tell them what the page being crawled is all about. I do still see established companies stuffing keywords in the meta keywords tag….. Not a good practice. Probably that page was optimized in the beginning of the twenty-first century and they just forgot about it…….

Here is a screen shot with so many keywords stuffed in the meta keywords tag!

2) Keep using meta keywords tag, but don’t make it a priority – whatever is the best for the business. This is probably the best way, considering some other non-Google search engines still using the meat keywords tag. The key is to not stuff it with every single keywords that you think is relevant to the page, but rather just put the core target keywords that are relevant to the page. Some sites actually list the same keywords that they are trying to rank on Google. This is why some SEO professionals think this practice will make the site vulnerable to competitor analysis, because you are practically announcing which keywords your pages are going after.

3) Don’t use meta keywords tag – “forget about it”

Search Engine Land falls to this group. I found an interesting post about how to legally hide words in meta keywords tag (published in 2007!) while doing research for this post and when I checked on the meta keywords tag, I could not find it on the page.

Conclusion

As far as best SEO practice goes, despite the fact that Google has stopped supporting meta keywords tag, it is still a good idea to use meta keywords tag because some search engines still taking it as a (very minor) ranking factor.

So, what is your opinion about using the meta keywords tag? Share it with us in the blog comment.

References

• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html
• http://selfstoragemagnet.com/tech/seo-tech/meta-keyword-tag-google-yahoo-or-bing/
• https://yoast.com/meta-keywords/ http://moz.com/community/q/are-meta-keywords-coming-back
• http://www.micrositemasters.com/blog/penguin-analysis-seo-isnt-dead-but-you-need-to-act-smarter-and-5-easy-ways-to-do-so/

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Tony

I am an SEO consultant who happens to be interested in affiliate marketing.
I build websites and use them for testing various SEO strategies and tactics.

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