Meta tags are html codes that contain your pages’ metadata. They are meant to convey additional data for use by web browsers, search engines, and the like. They are the insider information, so to speak.
One of its’ elements is the keyword attribute. A long, long time ago, search engines used it to determine what search terms your site should appear in. You enter in words that are relevant to your site and the spiders will index you for those. But after much use and abuse, not to mention the exponential growth of websites, it has become irrelevant. Too many websites have the same words and phrases into their meta-tags that it has become useless in its’ intended purpose.
Matt Cutts himself has admitted that Google web crawlers now ignore the keywords meta tag. For those of you that don’t know, Matt Cutts is the Head of Google’s Webspam team. This news is definitely as accurate as it gets. They do not have any effect whatsoever on your search rankings.
How would you know if your site has them? It’s simple. Open any of your pages and click Ctrl+U. Look for codes in the <head> section. They’re usually below the <title> tag and look like this:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”[keyword], [keyword phrase], [keyword2], [keyword3]”>
Now, I’m not saying that keywords meta tags are giving your sites any negative scores. There’s no proof of that and I don’t claim that it does. My point is that if your current SEO is still using a technique that’s considered ancient by everybody else, then maybe you need to reconsider the company that does your Internet Marketing. Who knows what other antiquated methods they may be employing?
Give us a call. We give FREE evaluations to anyone interested. Here at eTourism, we deliver results or you don’t pay, guaranteed!
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