Keyword Meta Tags

If you had to give up one meta tag, the meta keyword tag would be the one to give up.

The very misunderstood and abused meta tag, the meta keyword tag.

Everyone knows that to obtain high search engine rankings all you have to do is put the keywords that you want to rank high with into your meta tags, right? Not even close! If it were that simple. How many of you reading this have obsessed over meta tags such as the keyword tag? How many of you have tried putting every relevant keyword you could think of into this meta tag, only to have your site continue to be nearly invisible in the search engines.

Once upon a time, in the prehistoric days of the Internet (1995?), meta keyword tags were a great little tool for the search engines to use to help them determine how to rank sites in their search results. When the engines' databases were small, this meta tag was a quick, easy method to help decide which keywords might be important on a site.

However, as always happens with anything this simple, people began to abuse it. People (spammers) began to put keywords into the meta tag that had nothing to do with the content of their site. Because they knew lots of people were searching with the keyword "sex," for instance, they'd put that word in their meta tags a number of times to bring visitors to their site, even though their site had nothing to do with sex! Personally,

Over time, less and less weight was given to poor abused meta tags, and more and more weight was given to the actual content of the pages. If you were pressed for time and had to give up one meta tag, this would be the one to give up. To be sure, some engines still do index the words within these meta tags, but it appears that they use them as a minor supplement to the text in the body copy and title tags of your Web pages.

Since the search engines use a wide variety of factors to determine site rankings, optimizing a page to rank high is a cumulative effort. You should use everything available to you that the engines might give some weight, and therefore you should certainly use meta tags along with every other legitimate, acceptable technique available. At best, it may help boost your site a bit in those engines that still read them. At worst, it won't hurt your rankings.

As soon as someone begins researching search engine placement, they'll likely hear that meta tags are not the answer most beginners think they are. Over the years, they're quickly told, too many webmasters have abused the meta tags, which, is true. This article only talks and relates to Keyword META tags and should not be confused with Title Tag META tags.

The meta-keywords tag was designed as "a way to insert text into an HTML page that is not visible when the page is viewed through a browser." This definition, along with a good history of the meta tag, is available at various place on the web. Exactly two years ago, Inktomi was then the only major search engine still supporting the meta-keywords tag and, in MVI opinion, it was no longer worth using. Except, that was then and this is now.

We're not just talking about tiny, little Inktomi any more. We're talking about Yahoo! (who bought Inktomi and used it as the foundation for it's new search engine), and Yahoo! has the potential to deliver a LOT of traffic.Take a look at Yahoo's advice on using the meta-keyword tag:

So what exactly does that mean? Maybe the best way to answer that question is to look at some examples of how Yahoo! takes its own advice.

At http://autos.yahoo.com we find the following keyword meta-tag:

Note, however, the alternate spellings for kelley and kelly, one of the principal uses of the meta-keywords tag. For several years, many have recommended only including keywords in your list that can actually be found on the page -- and that is absolutely wrong! You should also include misspellings and synonyms not on the page.

Note, too, the keyword phrases are separated by commas, which answers another frequent question in the forums. This particular keyword list runs about 370 characters, much less than the 1,000 or 2,000 character limits I've seen recommended by others. Use that information as you will, but remember to consider the source (Yahoo! should know, after all).

Let's dig a little deeper (literally) at the same site. At http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars we find this keyword meta-tag:

The important thing to notice here is that this keyword list is substantially different than the first. Apparently, when they say we shouldn't use "one broad set of keywords for every page" they actually mean it. If Yahoo! gives little weight to the meta-keyword tag, and other engines like Google and AltaVista reportedly give no weight and may not even index it, is it really worth the effort to devise a different keyword list for every page on your site?

That's going to obviously be a personal call. Certainly, they aren't a panacea or silver bullet to great rankings, even on Yahoo!, and there are a WHOLE LOT of things of greater importance. MVI has always used the meta tag for keywords more as a comment field than anything else. Six months from now, when MVI revises the content on a page, it's helpful to know what keywords I was targeting. If Yahoo! is giving weight to my internal notes, so much the better.