Is it necessary to utilize meta keywords? Shouldn’t you? Are they beneficial? These are all common queries, and with some outdated information available on the internet today, many individuals new to SEO are unsure whether or not to utilize the meta keywords tag.
Meta keywords represent a meta> tag feature which can be used to provide search engines additional info about what a webpage is really about.
A <meta> tag defines what different types of metadata are about in an HTML document. These meta tags can be found in the source pages of a website, which is what search engine crawlers scan to determine what a page is about. The question is, should you use the meta keyword tag? It depends; let’s find out more…
Should You Still Use Meta Keywords?
Google demoted meta keywords because they’d been exploited by web designers and advertisers. Developers would “pack” the code with large-volume keywords and phrases, causing low-quality webpages to rank for those search queries, reducing the reliability and usefulness of the search queries significantly.
However, it is uncertain if terms have been completely eliminated from Google’s algorithms. Here’s why you should continue using the meta keywords.
- Other search engines could still use the tags – Yandex, Baidu, and Bing remain relevant search engines, competing with Google for search query tools. These websites can still use meta keyword tags to evaluate a webpage’s relevance. While their role in SEO remains uncertain, the meta tags can reveal the value of a page.
- Making Internal queries – Meta keywords can be applied to power an internal search.
- Evaluate competitors – In addition to a personal website, a webpage can use the information from a competitor to look for keywords. The data could be then applied to select keyword ideas, including search volumes and SEO measures.
The meta keywords tag is meaningless for 99.9% of users and spelling it out is a waste of effort. a webpage owner should only utilize it if you have a specific purpose for doing so, such as an internal keyword tagging interface or a site query.
