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The META Keywords Tag is Now Obsolete

Doug Williams @ 3:57 am

This blog entry was posted on April 27, 2010.

Google has announced that they do not consider the Keywords Meta Tag at all in their search algorithm. The Title tag and Description tag are still important. Google will rank your web page or site based on the text it finds on your pages and backlinks (links from other websites).

Matt Cutts in the video below announces that he does not recommend spending any time crafting and creating your sites keywords tags. They are now ignored by the search engines.

Where did the Keywords the Meta tag originate?

In 1995, the search engines Infoseek and AltaVista began promoting the use of the keywords attribute as a way of categorizing web pages. In May 1996, the major search engines got together to discuss and set standards for Meta data. That meeting is where the standards for the Meta robots tag and the Meta description tag were established. The Meta keywords tag was discussed but no standards were set.

The search engines quickly saw abuse of the Meta tags, particularly the keywords tags as a way for webmasters to hide irrelevant keywords in an effort to draw in website traffic. The keywords tag was often the most unreliable and misleading of the Meta tags.

The search engines responded by discounting the value of the keywords Meta tag. Today the keywords tag is now obsolete and holds no real value in search engine optimization.

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Filed under: SEO Strategies

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 at 3:57 am and is filed under SEO Strategies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Comments

  1. Google has earlier said that it will not count the Meta description when it is ranking any page but some recent developments have forced Meta description’s return. The new concept of personalized search has made it possible for the Meta description to return.

    Comment by charles — April 27, 2010 @ 6:07 am

  2. Meta Description is very important because it appears as the description in the Google search results. It’s main function is to help draw people to your website with a compelling description of your offering on that page.

    If you want your prospects to call, include your phone number. Many will call without even clicking through to your website. Very few websites do this and you can stand out from the crowd and attract phone calls.

    Comment by Doug Williams — April 27, 2010 @ 6:59 am

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