Summary: This article considers whether or not placing keywords in your tag is beneficial for SEO and for your rankings in Google at all.
What are meta keywords? They are one of the meta tags you can insert in the head of your document. They’re not visible to people visiting your web page but instead are placed there by web developers for search engines to see. Here’s an example:
<meta name="keywords" content="search engine optimisation, seo, web design" />
It would seem as though having a name like ‘META keyword tags’ would mean that keyword placement within this tag would help with SEO efforts.
The purpose of the META keyword tag is to tell the search engine what keywords are important to your page so that users can find you when they search.
Whilst seeming like a good idea and once seen as a way to highlight keywords, surprise, surprise, it actually does nothing. In fact, this tag is now totally ignored by Google and most other search engines that have any pull whatsoever. Within the analytics now used by search engines, the META keyword tag has become irrelevant.
It all goes back to the notion that sticking keywords in anywhere and everywhere does not produce results. What can make a difference is carefully selecting keywords and using them effectively throughout your website – content and some tags – on a balanced basis. The aim is to use words that you know a user would search for when looking for content that you have.
So is the tag totally redundant? Almost, yes. There may be a few lesser known search engines that use it and so there’s certainly no harm in specifying keywords in there (we do!). Include the specific or primary keyword that describes your site and a couple of general keywords within a META keyword tag, including one that might be a common misspelling of something associated with your site’s theme or business. It’s still not a good idea to repeat the same word or use it more than three times because the spam police will get onto you quick!
There’s one place where keyword placement in META keyword tags might do something with regards to SEO – and that’s when you’re using a blogging platform like Wordpress for or on your website. These platforms sometimes use the same keywords as tags. So naturally, keep your keywords concise – or you’ll end up with hundreds of useless tag pages that have no SEO value – plus, limitations on characters will likely be in place for any search engines that do pay attention to the tag.
Don’t forget that keywords in the keywords meta tag should be comma-delimited, e.g. ’search engine optimisation, seo, web design’, not ’search engine optimisation seo web design’.
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