Best Practices for Meta Keywords

[Peter K. Lam]

I know that Google states that they no longer user the meta keyword fields but I still feel it's important to have it on my pages. You never know if Google will one day go back to using meta keywords again. With that said, I want to find out about some best practices for the keyword field. What I've been doing is checking the content on my pages to make sure my keywords are in the text then used those for the meta keyword field. I put in no more than 10 keyword phrases in that field. I go for less most of the time but some pages, like homepages/landing pages, cover a little broader subjects. Thanks for any feedback.

[dzine]

If Google doesn't care about the "keywords" meta anymore (and rightly so I might add) then whose 'best practices' do you want to follow exactly?

[Peter K. Lam]

Does the SEO community as a whole have some guidelines on how not to abuse the meta keywords? I'm sure there are people who still use it and people who don't use it anymore.

[tstolber]

The only best practice advice I would give is not to include a keyword that isn't in your content.

[Contra]

The only best practice advice I would give is not to include a keyword that isn't in your content.

Would that be a negative to the site, possibly causing a penalization?

I ask because I put META Keywords into each page but then I gave up caring about them when I found out that they don't matter anymore. And since then I have changed the content of many of the pages without touching the Keywords. Should I just go and deleted the entire META Keyword line?

[tstolber]

My preference is not to use Meta keywords. There isn't really much in the way of best practice for it, but you have to question the authenticity of a site that lists keywords that aren't in its content. Does this give a specific and measurable penalty? I don't know but I would go out of my way to make sure that it wasn't a possibility.

[Peter K. Lam]

If your meta keywords are bad, as in oversaturated with keywords (and spammy) then I'd suggest you remove them for the pages. If they aren't bad, I don't think you get penalized for leaving them in there. I've been actively working on my meta keyword data and keeping it relevant and clean. I can't imagine that Google would penalize just for having meta keyword data in the pages. Also, I'm not entirely sure if other services disregard the keyword field (such as Yahoo! Bing, Ask, etc.).

[tstolber]

Having decent meta keywords in won't cause a penalty, but they won't do anything for you.

[9dotstrategies]

I know that Google states that they no longer user the meta keyword fields but I still feel it's important to have it on my pages. You never know if Google will one day go back to using meta keywords again. With that said, I want to find out about some best practices for the keyword field. What I've been doing is checking the content on my pages to make sure my keywords are in the text then used those for the meta keyword field. I put in no more than 10 keyword phrases in that field. I go for less most of the time but some pages, like homepages/landing pages, cover a little broader subjects. Thanks for any feedback.

Don't focus on meta keywords but rather focus on Title and meta description. Use a descriptive title of your website and meta description to describe what page/site is all about. Don't spam keywords on your title and description.

Meta keywords are weighed less heavily by the search engines these days, but probably still worthwhile to include. Instead of adding every single keyword you can think of, add keywords that are relevant to the theme and copy of the specific page you’re addressing. Include anywhere between 1-10 keywords. Less than 60-70 characters. Meta keywords are weighed less heavily by the search engines these days, but probably still worthwhile to include. Instead of adding every single keyword you can think of, add keywords that are relevant to the theme and copy of the specific page you’re addressing. Include anywhere between 1-10 keywords. Less than 60-70 characters.

[Alex Coleman]

Yes, I am totally agrred with Mr Tstolber. We need to keep our tags related to the site and natural like a informative sentence which gives highlight of the page.