Do Meta Keywords Matter?
With Bing taking over search for Yahoo and MSN Live there has been a lot of talk lately as to whether or not meta keywords will play a role in on-page SEO.
Yesterday, Google officially published an article on their webmaster blog stating they “do not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking.” Matt Cutts had eluded to this on his site for some time, but now it’s official. In fact, they say they haven’t included it in their ranking for years.
My colleague Mark found an article from Bing’s webmaster blog that suggests they may include it in their ranking algorithm. Well, at least they suggest we not ignore it entirely.
The tag’s keyword attribute is not the page rank panacea it once was back in the prehistoric days of Internet search. It was abused far too much and lost most of its cachet. But there’s no need to ignore the tag. Take advantage of all legitimate opportunities to score keyword credit, even when the payoff is relatively low. Fill in this tag’s text with relevant keywords and phrases that describe that page’s content.
So, what would my suggestion be? For now, here are a few tips:
- Use no more than 8 to 10 relevant meta keywords per page
- Use singular and plural versions of keywords
- Include common mispellings if they exist
Bing also gives some great tips:
- Choose words that may be secondary keyword terms (save the primary keywords for use in the and description tags), and even include a few, commonly seen typographical errors of primary keywords, just for good measure
- Limit your keyword and key phrase text, separated by commas, to no more than 874 characters
- Don’t repeat a keyword more than 4 times among the keywords and phrases in the list
Do you have any other tips for writing your meta keywords?
Photo credit: tiagodoria
