Ah, the meta keywords tag...
I'm surprised to see how many webmasters, still to this day, stuff dozens
(and more) keywords into the meta tag in hopes of delivering visitors to a site.
Surely, they know by now that this only hurts the chances of qualified visitors
finding their site on the search engines.
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It is debatable whether the meta keywords tag should be used at all anymore.
Google reportedly no longer uses the meta keywords tag in determining a site's
ranking. Yahoo does still use the meta keywords tag; albeit reportedly places
little weight on it.
Search engines used to rely heavily on the meta keywords tag in an attempt to
determine which keywords were relevant to a web page. Unfortunately, this
practice eventually lead to the misuse of the tag. The sophisticated search
engines of today are able to examine the actual keywords in the body of a web
page--rendering the keyword meta tag much less significant.
The risks associated with using the meta keywords tag may out way the
benefits.
Risks
- Using keywords that are not relevant to (or not used in the content of)
your web page can decrease your rankings in the major search engines
- Your competitors can easily view your targeted keywords and use them to
build a competitive SEO or PPC campaign against you
Benefit
- A small advantage in positioning with some of the major search engines
Should you use it or loose it? You decide...
Mary E. Archer is president and founder of Strategic Ranking LLC, a national
search engine marketing consulting company based in Richmond, Virginia. Learn
more about Strategic Ranking's search engine optimization, search advertising
and news search engine promotion solutions at
http://www.strategic-ranking.com
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