META Keywords: Are they still important for SEO?

Posted 19 February 2012 and added to the following categories: Meta Tags, On-Page, SEO

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META keywords, SEO, does Google still use it, how many keywords should I include… so many questions around this tag; so let’s solve it once and for all.

So what is it?

Wikipedia defines the tag as follows:

The keywords attribute was popularized by search engines such as Infoseek and AltaVista in 1995, and its popularity quickly grew until it became one of the most commonly used meta elements. You can read more here.

What does it look like?

Below is an example of the META keywords tag:

Do the search engines still use it?

Very simple answer, Google doesn’t! Here is a video by Matt Cutts talking about the META keywords tag:

But, Bing, which also powers Yahoo, does use this tag as a signal. Bing’s Senior Product Manager, Duane Forrester, had this to say:

I’ll make this statement: meta keywords is a signal. One of roughly a thousand we analyze. Getting it right is a nice perk for us, but won’t rock your world. Abusing meta keywords can hurt you.

Here’s a video from SEOmoz which Duane Forrester who explains a little more:

My views on the META keywords tag…

I’ve deliberated time and time again about whether or not to stop using the META keywords tag, and I can honest say I still use it and optimise it to match page content.

Whilst I know it doesn’t do anything for Google, Bing still uses it and whilst this search engine still delivers traffic, all be it very low, I’ll continue to stick with it – but it’s certainly at the bottom of the pile when it comes to SEO.

How do you correctly format them?

Having used this tag for many years, I’ve found, even when Google used this tag, 3 – 5 keywords or phrases within it works best. Also its important to do all the terms in lower case and divided with a comma and space.

Even in 2012 I’m still seeing websites stuff this tag with 20+ keyword variations – this is just crazy and looks spammy!

Final thoughts…

Whilst the number one search engine Google doesn’t use this tag as a ranking signal, I still feel it’s important to cover all of your bases and get the most you can out of a webpage, even if its just 0.5% and for Bing to look at.

About the author: Dave Cain is an SEO with 10 years digital marketing experience. He can be followed on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ or you can subscribe to his RSS feed.

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3 Comments

Aaron Lee
March 1, 2012

Hi Dave,

Another brilliant post, however, I would like to ask you one thing, I’ve heard about Dublin Core meta content, is that at all beneficial to SEO, or just another compliance issue?

Reply
- Dave Cain
  March 1, 2012
  
  Hi Aaron,
  
  Thanks for the comments and question.
  
  Dublin Core metatags – interesting topic, I’ve never been able to find a definitive answer around these and some SEOs have speculated. Honestly, I’ve never used the mark-up and only know a little around them – the big thing at the moment which is slightly similar is the micro formatting mark-up Schema, which I’ve found works really well and does improve CTR in search.
  
  I would also say, focus on the things that matter at the moment i.e. user focused content, social presence and building good online relationships.
  
  Hope this helps,
  Dave.
  
  Reply
  - Aaron Lee
    April 19, 2012
    
    Thanks a lot! I’ve looked into the Schema formatting and it seems to be improving slowly. Thanks again.
    
    Reply

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