December 30, 2009
Are Meta Keywords hurting your Google rankings?
What about Meta Keywords? Shouldn’t we be using them to help our search engine rankings?
I have had this discussion with website owners, co-workers, and colleagues dozens of times. When I tell them I use Meta keywords to find out what keywords their competition is trying to rank for, they usually drop it. For example, here is the tag from the home page of a pizza site that ranks well on Google:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Pizza Restaurant, Chicago Style Pizza, Deep Dish Pizza, Micro Brews, Draft Beer, Tavern, Sports Bar, Happy Hour, NTN, Free WiFi, Calzones, Pool, Billiards, Guinness, Family Dining, Kid-Friendly”>
I can get an idea of what their most important terms are. What’s interesting in this example is they have terms that will never rank (‘Guinness’, ‘Happy Hour’) on Google. Maybe they’re trying to throw the competition off? Or maybe they wasted their time – you decide.
Even without the keywords meta tag, your competition can easily infer what you are trying to rank for by analyzing the Title tag, Meta Description, Alt-Text, Body content, Header tags, inbound link anchor text, etc. But why make it easier by putting your primary keywords in a tag that is such an easy target? Can you see how this information, in the hands of your competitors, can be used to hurt your SEO rankings?
I haven’t updated Meta keywords on any of my sites or my client’s sites (unless they absolutely insist) for years and they all have great rankings. The reality is that Google doesn’t consider them at all when it comes to search results.
If the other secondary and tertiary search engines do, it is a small piece of the ranking algorithm.
The exception is when I come across a site, during an SEO audit, that has many unrelated terms in their keywords that don’t even exist in the content of the page. I may update it or simply delete it to save brain damage.
If you feel you must optimize this tag, do it with eyes wide open and make sure you have content on the page that reflects the keywords in your list.
By contrast, the Meta description is extremely important. Don’t optimize it for the search engines but do optimize it for your audience since this is the text that is often displayed on the SERP. Think of it as ad copy.
Here’s my secret for making Meta keywords work for you:
(drum roll)
Ignore them. You’ll gain hours of valuable time to develop and execute your holistic Internet marketing strategy.
The inspiration for this post came from a LinkedIn discussion where you’ll find the debate is alive and well.
Happy New Year!
Bryan Phillips
Holistic Online Marketer
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