Comments on: Do you use the META keywords tag?

By: Topher Kohan

Topher Kohan — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:21:30 +0000

Yes I use ut because a lot of on site search applications still use the meta keywords to return results.

By: Scott Polk

Scott Polk — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:30:59 +0000

Yes – I still use them, but automate the population – you never know what the engines may or may not revert back to. Not to mention it simply is a way to audit/task pages with keywords.

As far as saving space for more body copy to be spidered … highly doubtful that would be an issue in any major search engine. I have pages that have over 3500 words of indexed content on them … no issues there.

I do not believe you will be hurting yourself in the rankings by not using them, but I look items like this as “tie breakers” – all other things being even, this “may” help you – I say sweat the small stuff (but automate it)

By: Alysson

Alysson — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:11:12 +0000

Because some bookmarking services automatically populate titles, descriptions and keywords fields with the META information, I still use them. It takes only a few seconds to paste the target terms from a keyword map document into the META tag.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:23:29 +0000

Lyndsay, long time no see; maybe at pubcon again this year.

If a new client has been trying to stuff their meta with keywords, I just delete everything except the single keyword phrase I am trying to rank for. I use it just in case antiquated search engines still look at it. I haven’t noticed any negative affect in Google unless a client is keyword stuffing. If all you care about is Google and you are starting from scratch, I would skip it; keep that load time down to a minimum.

By: John Thyfault

John Thyfault — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:08:29 +0000

We used to use it as a documentation tool. It was never really effective for anything else.

We have backed out this year as part of our incremental page speed improvement effort for our clients. It is a small bit of bytes but every little byte counts. (feel free to groan over the alliteration)

By: Lyndsay Walker

Lyndsay Walker — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:42:53 +0000

@Jack Leblond
That’s actually what drove me to ask the question. I don’t even want to spend a minute on it when I can use those 60 seconds for something more productive (which, in this case, appears to have been creating a poll).

By: Lyndsay Walker

Lyndsay Walker — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:41:18 +0000

That was my thought too Steve! So you could argue that it actually hinders ranking. Slightly. But by a lot more if you’ve shoved hundreds of keywords in there.

By: steveplunkett

steveplunkett — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:40:12 +0000

I actually started removing it to allow more characters of the body copy to be spidered.
it’s not a factor in search rankings.

By: Jack Leblond

Jack Leblond — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:35:37 +0000

Use – yes…a lot of effort – no. If they provide even a small clue to content *somehow*- great, if not – well, I’m only out a minute of my time.