Keywords in meta data

10 replies
  • SEO
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For years I have always put my main keywords in my background information on my sites in the meta data keyword section.

Lately I have been looking at many different categories in a search to see what people are using as there meta keywords and find many of the top sites have no meta keywords listed. They are pretty easy to look for since yahoo lets you see the page source where you can see the html code and can look for the meta data keywords.

I am wondering why, is this something fairly new and does it still mater and should we still do it on our sites. At least for the sites I looked at it doesn't seem to mater as they were all in the top 5 of page one on yahoo and when checking the same sites on google they were in just about the same positions there as well. Any thoughts.
#data #keywords #meta
  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    Major search engines stopped using meta keyword data as a ranking signal nearly a decade ago. It does nothing to boost your rankings, wastes your time and only tells your competition what keywords you are targeting a page for.
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  • Profile picture of the author marks2424
    wow that is interesting because I still hear people talking about how great wordpress is because it automatically fills that in for you. Does it still let search engines know if your site has what people are looking for which was another thing I thought it was for.
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    • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
      There is a ton of bad information out there. You still see people telling webmasters to social bookmark their sites, to do blog commenting, to create forum profile links. Some people still think that links on social networks provide SEO value. Plenty of people on this forum advocate those things.

      Your title tag and the content on your pages tell search engines what your pages are about. Meta keyword tags do nothing. Maybe Matt Cutts can convince you -
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  • Profile picture of the author DavidKellog
    They used to work pretty well...in 2003. C'mon...search engines are way too smart nowadays to be influenced by these little tricks.
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  • Profile picture of the author webdevpro
    About a decade ago, webmaster were used to use meta keywords for exploiting search rankings. Now a days it has no value in major search engines especially like Google. But still there is no harm using them coz' it may be worth for some other crawlers.
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  • Profile picture of the author paulgl
    No search engine ever really used meta keywords for ranking. Filing maybe, but not ranking.

    When the net as we know it started, there were none. There were directories. Directories used them. All you had to do was type your site in to submit, and they filled in the rest with your meta junk.

    I'm dating myself, but directories were the $#!T~. Along with a lot of other nonsense that seems so silly now: lake effect javascript, blink tag, awards, link rings,...

    The reason why you hear so many people talk about them, is because so many people are clueless.

    You came here with a false premise and you are shocked.

    I'm not shocked. The lot of you are following fools.

    Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author hentis
    I agree with Paul an Dave.

    Follow what the search engine prescribes, not what some make believe master say.
    So many gurus will have you believe that they know better about Google than Google itself.

    Google the subjects you are unsure of and find the Youtube videos where Google's employees speak.
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  • Profile picture of the author nina789
    I dont know about yahoo and bing but google certainly doesnt consider keyword meta tag anymore. That is why many websites have dropped this meta tag from including on their site.
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  • Profile picture of the author virtuousvalley
    Google is not tracking the keywords from meta tags. so its wastage of time to write your keywords and how it to your competitors.
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  • Profile picture of the author josoftech
    Nowadays companies are not using meta keyword in that website because maximum search engines are not following meta keywords they just focus on meta Title and description.

    Originally Posted by marks2424 View Post

    For years I have always put my main keywords in my background information on my sites in the meta data keyword section.

    Lately I have been looking at many different categories in a search to see what people are using as there meta keywords and find many of the top sites have no meta keywords listed. They are pretty easy to look for since yahoo lets you see the page source where you can see the html code and can look for the meta data keywords.

    I am wondering why, is this something fairly new and does it still mater and should we still do it on our sites. At least for the sites I looked at it doesn't seem to mater as they were all in the top 5 of page one on yahoo and when checking the same sites on google they were in just about the same positions there as well. Any thoughts.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10920336].message }}

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