The Tendo View

It’s finally official: Google ignores keyword meta tags. Here it is from the horse’s mouth.

This may be really, really old news to some (circa 1999 anyone?). But judging from the long string of responses to the Google post, it was indeed news to many people. And the practice of including keyword meta tags is clearly still widespread.

Yet, the Google announcement does beg the question: If these tags are being ignored by Google, are you wasting your time by including them?

I think not. Selecting a few strong keywords or key phrases just isn’t that time consuming, so you’re not losing much by including them. And the increase in file size of individual pages is negligible. Even if your keyword meta tags aren’t directly enhancing your search rankings on Google, there are still come compelling reasons for including them:

1)      Google isn’t the only game in town. Other search engines, such as Yahoo and Bing, could still be using keyword meta tags. Regardless of what you may have heard through the grapevine, short of an official announcement, there’s no reason to believe other search engines aren’t using keyword meta tags.

2)      Keyword meta tags won’t harm your rankings. If you follow the traditional SEO best practice of including five to seven keywords in your keyword meta tags, you certainly aren’t going to harm your rankings on Google, or any other search engine. If you try sneaky things like stuffing your meta tags with competitor keywords and that sort of thing, you may indeed harm your rankings. But following the straight and narrow path won’t hurt you—and it may help your rankings on other search engines.

3)      Keywords can help with internal sorting and search. You may want to build your own internal search engine for your site, and using keywords is certainly easier than configuring the sophisticated algorithms that Google uses. And in some cases, building your own search engine may be preferable than using an embedded Google search function. If you want people searching for keywords such as “human resources” or “jobs” to land on the same page, your own search engine might serve those needs better.

4)      Keywords help you keep your content focused. I saved this one for last because I think it’s actually one of the best reasons for keeping keywords. Selecting three to five strong keywords before you even start writing your page will help you keep that content narrowly focused on the topic. Incorporating those keywords into your copy will go even further to keep you focused. In addition, repeating keywords into your copy will improve your search rankings. Not because a search engine is looking at your keyword meta tags, but because it’s scanning the content on the page. And if it contains a few keywords tightly focused on your topic (and that match the language of your users), your page will rank higher.

So, what do you think about using keyword meta tags? Do you still use ‘em? Been omitting ‘em for years? In either case, what are your reasons?