Now, about this whole meta keywords issue. If Yahoo uses it, and there’s a possibility that Google does in some ways, or even if only Yahoo does, and maybe some lesser search engines, then for the lousy few moments it takes to fill the field, why wouldn’t I take that time?

Sure, it’s not on my top five SEO list. But neither are twenty or thirty other things I do.

But if using it helps even a bit, then personally, I feel it’s worth it.

Just as valuable to me is the fact that it’s a nifty little consistently located place for me to keep the words and phrases that I want to have there as a reminder for my clients and my team to refer to when they’re working on the content of a page. Can’t remember which words and phrases you need to build your natural language site content around? Simple – refer to the meta keywords field!

Anyway, I love the fact that these issues are so debatable – the more we discuss and debate them within the industry, the more we hone our skills. And for me, I’m always needing to do that. How else am I ever going to eventually become the SEO demi-god I’ve made myself out to be in my own mind?

1. Check this ratio: (number of meta keywords) / (number of words in the visible copy)

2. If the ratio is below a certain threshold, give the keywords a certain weight (because a small ratio proves that this meta tag is probably used sensibly).

3. If it is above that threshold, but still smaller than a second, higher threshold, give less weight to the keywords.

4. It this ratio is above the second threshold (so the meta tag is overstuffed with keywords relative to the amount of copy), give the keywords no weight.

One other use of keyword values might be to assist in defaulting social bookmark “tags” for users who bookmark a page. The keywords can be passed on to many social media sites with the help of a bit of JavaScript.

It might be worth specifically noting that the TITLE tag, which appears along with the meta tags in the html HEAD document section, is simply the document title, not the “title meta tag” I often hear it called.

Unlike the meta tags, it is visible. The graphical browsers include it at the top of the browser window. They also use it as a page’s bookmark title. The terminal based browser Lynx displays the TITLE at the top of the page.

As for closing meta tags with />, this is indeed an xml requirement for sites which have specified xhtml as the html version in the DOCTYPE statement at the top of a page. Other common tags which need this closure include IMG, BR and HR.

Cheers!

- Anthony

1) The test shows that Google and Yahoo will not recover a page if the word you searched for only appears within the meta keywords area. If they did, you’d have seen my home page coming up. If the argument is they retrieve the page but then say oh, the word is only in the meta keywords tag so don’t show it, same thing in the end. The page isn’t turning up.

2) My recommendation is don’t bother with the tag. But if you really want to, then misspellings to me are fine. That been a long-standing use of the meta keywords tag, so you’re on solid ground in my book.

3) It’s a simplistic test because that’s all it needs to be. It was designed to see if a search engine would find a page if the word you looked for only appeared in the meta keywords tag. Two do; two don’t. It’s not a ranking test, so a simple yes/no answer is absolutely fine.

6) It costs time. Too many beginners spend way too much time on the tag rather than their content. That’s a serious cost, hence my conclusion :)

As for taking note, if I were a search engine, I’d ignore the tag because of the widespread misuse. I’d rely more on other factors — which is what they in fact do.