Google DOES NOT use the keywords meta tag

I have tried many times to explain  to a client that the keywords meta tag is no longer used by Google with no official evidence to back my claim other than what I have experienced myself in live testing. Now Google has finally put this beast to rest and SEO experts like myself can directly point clients and crazy self claimed SEO nuts to the proof.

Google actually announced that they have in fact NEVER used the “keywords” meta tag in search ranking. WOW, how many SEO guys have wasted countless hours doing meta keywords, and how many of those used meta keywords as a selling point for their SEO experience.  I have told many SEO clients that is a SEO company blabs on about the importance of meta keywords then it is time to send them walking.

Should I remove my keywords meta tag?

I would say yes in all cases, however, some of the smaller search engines do use the keywords tag (like Ananzi). Many sites abuse this tag so it can in some cases cause more harm than good. If you really want to leave them in to support the tiny percentage that use them then make sure you do not overdo it with a string of 20+ keywords, use a couple of keywords that best describe your company or product.

What about the other meta tags?

Google does use some of the meta tags like the “description” meta tag just for its snippets, however, when it comes to search engine ranking, the description meta tags plays NO role whatsoever.

How do I remove the keyword meta tag?

Go into the HTML of your page (if you are not sure then ask your web company to help you) and remove the line of code that looks like the following.

<meta name=”keywords” Content=”a whole, bunch, of, keyword, junk, is placed, in here, remove, the whole, line”>

Remove the whole line from start to finish.