Do Keyword Meta Tags Work?
The meandering course of SEO throughout its lifetime has seen its fair share of changes, but nothing as dramatic as how Keyword Meta Tags have altered over time in the world of Search Engine Optimization.
Meta Tags were introduced almost from the outset of the internet as we know it today. Search Engines wanted an easy way to identify the contents of a webpage. Those who understood this fact spammed the heck out of the search engines with false information.
Think about your browsing experience 15 years ago in relation to today. You don’t get all the porn pop up and links that go to non-family friendly websites today that you used to. One of the big reasons that this used to happen was that these types of sites would cram their keyword meta tags with non-porn terms in order to get you to their site and then inundate you with pop-up windows that had nothing to do with your original search engine query.
An amusing little bit taken from Aqua Teen Hunger Force about the dangers of pop-ups! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNz0c0q0X3Y
Over time, in an effort to minimize the affect the keyword meta data tag would have on search engine results, they started to limit the number of characters that they actually paid attention to. About 5 years ago they limited it to around 75ish characters so that a webmaster couldn’t insert hundreds of non-valid keywords… just a handful of non-valid ones!
Eventually, the algorithm became sophisticated enough to be able to determine the content/topic of a webpage without the ‘help’ of the webmaster of the site; making the keyword meta tag completely pointless.
That being said, every day I see companies that claim to do top-level SEO perpetuating this SEO myth, yet have their keyword meta tag stuffed with various keywords. This in and of itself isn’t harmful, but why do something that has no relevancy? Probably about 75% of those “SEO companies” that I see doing this have WAY more than 75 characters in their meta tag. So… this tells me that they are using SEO techniques from at least 5 years ago.
In 2009 Matt Cutts outright told the SEO community that they don’t pay any attention to this meta tag. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK7IPbnmvVU&feature=youtu.be&em
Now I don’t pretend to have any insight into the boss of the internet, Google, but I do believe that the keyword meta tag could be utilized for positive means – the prevention of spam. I feel that Google may, or could in the future, allow information from this meta tag to be analyzed against the content of the website in general and not boost rankings, but penalize sites who are trying to blatantly spam. That is just my feeling, but who knows.
If you run across a Kitchener SEO company that exposes the virtues of the keyword meta tag, please nod your head in agreement and then exit gracefully. Hopefully to make a call to Advanced Web Solutions for the real SEO goods!
