Keywords in Meta Tags

[kev woodman]

Until recently I've always used the meta tag for keywords out of habit...but it seems that almost none of the major search engines pay any attention to them anymore (unlike the title and description elements which are still important).

The article at " searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167931 gives a nice overview of meta tags but can anyone still think of a reason to carry on using keywords?

[Administrator]

There is no need to have meta tags now as the top 3 Search engines pay no attention to meta tags. Title and desicription is very important and you also need to focus on targetting keywords on your webpages from different locations.

I have practical explanation for this. Type "Webhost Manager Tutorials" in google and check which website is ranked 7th in google. You will find http://webhosting.uk.com/whm.php but this page tself has got no mention of "webhost manager tutorials" on it. main reason this page is shown on top in google is that it gets link from the page http://webhosting.uk.com/support.php and this support page has links from rest of the website, blogs and forums which gives boost to the link forwarded by the support page.

I hope you have understood my explanation

[Jan]

Yes, the top search engine do not consider the meta tags but there are literally thousands of smaller search engine where meta tags are still considered as an important factor so why not use them?

[Peter]

Keywords in Meta Tags should not be prioritized for SEO. You can use meta keywords in spare time and keep them very relevant to the page content as right use of Meta keywords does not harm. Top search engines like Google don't give importance to Meta Keywords anymore, they just use content on your site instead to rank it. But Meta Keywords are still used by smaller search engines, so it's better to use them that not at all.

[suzane]

Meta tags have never been a guaranteed way to gain a top ranking on crawler-based search engines. Today, the most valuable feature they offer to the web site owner is the ability to control to some degree how their web pages are described by some search engines. Now a days top search engines do not consider meta tags as an important factor. But still if meta tags are used in proper position then it can be helpful to increase the traffic as there are millions of smaller search engine which still consider it.

[paul]

Yes, I think meta tags has still some life left, better to use it rather than let it die peacefully.