Should I spend time on meta keywords tags?



Ryan in Dearborn, MI asks: “Can you think of any reason, whatsoever, to validate spending more than 5 minutes creating meta keywords?”

source

18 thoughts on “Should I spend time on meta keywords tags?”

  1. Ok keywords are obsolete and no longer used agreed. However a CMS system like prestashop still uses Product Tags. see here: (http://doc.prestashop.com/display/PS16/Managing+Tags). However when viewing source code these tags are nowhere to be found. Now what is actually the purpose of spending hours inserting these tags per product if they are not reflected in the source code and secondly what is their relevance ?

  2. Matt, I disagree with you. The keyword meta tag structure was created well before Google was envisioned and keywords are still used by many software applications including most ranking software as well as directory admins. We hope Google is around a long time, but let's not start throwing out proper HTML formatting because Google may not use it currently.

  3. Hi Matt,
    Thank you for this and all your videos, quick question…
    When you draw snippets to use as the Google listing description, instead of using the designated meta description, is anything in play? e.g. alt tags, html code, meta content, etc?

  4. looking at this video i can't help but think that Dr evil has taken over Google. Any second now he's going to start talking about "MAGMA" Where's Mini Google?

  5. Thanks for pointing out that Bing no longer uses this tag. They should amend their guidelines. @gptaylor84 @aminozuur Yahoo organic search is slated to convert to Bing results by end of summer. I wouldn't do anything for Yahoo at this time.

  6. just because Google don't use it, doesn't mean you shouldn't spend 2 minutes adding a couple of keywords, as you would with a WordPress blog adding tags. remember Google isn't the only search engine, and some still use them like Yahoo for example.

    Also, what happens if in X years time Google announce oh yeah we're going to use it again, you then have the job of trawling into your past content adding them all back in.

  7. @yitzboy Actually, Stefan (presumably Bing Director Stefan Weitz) posted a comment Search Engine Land stating that Bing does not use the meta keywords tag. Do a google search for the text you quoted to find the post. 🙂

  8. Bing says they use the Meta Keywords tag. Here is a cut from their guidelines:
    The meta tags keyword attribute is not the page rank panacea it once was. But theres no need to ignore the tag. Take advantage to score keyword credit, even when the payoff is relatively low. Fill in this tags text with relevant keywords and phrases that describe that pages content. Use secondary keyword terms and commonly seen typographical errors of primary keywords.

  9. Since Google isn't the only searchengine that people use (believe it or not, some idiots use Yahoo or Bing), it might just be worth spending 10 seconds on the keywords.. but not more 🙂

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top