The use of meta keywords in SEO has been a topic of debate for quite some time now. While they were once an essential element in helping search engines understand the content of a web page, their importance has significantly diminished over the years. In this article, we will take a closer look at what meta keywords are, how they were used in the past, and whether they still hold any value in today’s SEO landscape.
Meta keywords are a type of meta tag that appear in the HTML code of a webpage. They are meant to provide search engines with information about the content of the page, making it easier for them to index and rank the page accordingly. In the early days of SEO, meta keywords played a vital role in determining a website’s search engine rankings. Webmasters would include a list of relevant keywords in the meta keywords tag, hoping to improve their site’s visibility in search results.
However, as search engines became more sophisticated, they started to rely less on meta keywords and more on other signals to determine the relevance and quality of a webpage. Google, in particular, announced back in 2009 that they no longer use meta keywords as a ranking factor. This decision was made due to the widespread abuse of meta keywords by spammers and black-hat SEO practitioners who would stuff irrelevant keywords into the tag in an attempt to manipulate search results.
