Meta Keywords Are not Useless – Contrary to Popular Belief

To say that meta keywords are useless is a bit exaggerated. While it’s true that they don’t have the same punch as they once did, they still have some uses. Overreaction is bad business in SEO.

For one thing, Yahoo still picks them up. You have to trick it a little, though, by misspelling the keywords.

Google and MSN get a little more complicated. They say that meta tags can’t affect your SERP rankings, but they can improve your click-through ratings. Now, if your click-through ratings directly affect your SERP placement, doesn’t that mean that meta tags DO influence your SERP rankings?

The logic gets more twisted than that with Google. In their webmaster support, they suggest using quality and truly descriptive descriptions because they can go a long way toward improving the amount and quality of your traffic. Traffic, again, increases your SERP placement, so what do they mean by saying meta descriptions don’t matter?

What about Web 2.0? This really gets crazy. It seems that all kinds of rules that Google sets up for webmasters to follow just get thrown out the window. Tell me that the tag clouds aren’t keyword abuse! With a little bit of snooping around, you’ll see that blogs in particular get away with a lot of stuff that other sites can’t do.

There’s also a funny little thing where meta keyword tags will hurt your rankings if you use the same meta description for every page on your site. If they don’t matter, then why the negative results? A lot can be learned about what still matters by seeing how it can get you the Google smack if you do it wrong.