Why You Should Still Care About Keyword Tags

Google announced Monday that keyword meta tags are not used in rankings. For years, most SEOs have said the keyword tag doesn’t matter. Danny Sullivan said it was dead in 2002. It lived on, with good reason: it still delivered better SEO results.

First, a very brief and non-technical SEO primer. A search engine attempts to identify and return the most relevant ranked pages for any given search. To accomplish this, search engines must:

• Understand what a page is about
• Know how important the page is to that topic

An SEO practitioner influences both points, and it starts with the keyword meta tag and the best practices it drives. The keyword meta tag ensures that your process starts with keyword research, which helps organizations move from internal nomenclature to the language your audience uses to describe a problem, challenge, or as-of-yet unknown solution (which you offer!).

The keyword meta tag also holds the results of your keyword research, where it is available to your entire organization, from copywriters to Web developers. It tells everyone involved in your Web site content whether the page is about Coca-Cola, corn syrup, or refreshment and keeps your page content focused.

The result is content focused on your audience. Content that attracts more relevant incoming links with more targeted anchor text and drives your SEO results. For many organizations, success will still start with the focus the keyword meta tag created on keyword research and content development.

The keyword meta tag may have no technical SEO value. None of the search engines will care about your keyword meta tag. But you should still care.

Long live the keyword meta tag.