SEO Article Series - Guide to SEO Meta Keyword Tags

These SEO articles are excerpted from an SEO article series on creating search engine optimized meta tags. This is a short summary on SEO meta keyword tags and goes along with Titles, Description and Keyword Meta Tags, Guide to SEO Title Tags and Guide to SEO Meta Description Tags to complete the series.

Guide to SEO Meta Keyword Tags
by Valerie DiCarlo - VDC Enterprises, LLC

While most major search engines have declared they no longer use the meta keywords tag in their ranking algorithms, the meta keywords tag still remains a useful way to reinforce the terms you think are important on the page.  The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with your body copy.   If you use words in the meta keywords tag that don’t appear in the page content, the meta keywords tag is unlikely to help.

Key Considerations When Developing Your Meta Keyword Tags:

• Through initial keyword research and analysis, determine the targeted searched keyword phrases that users are searching to find your niche market.
• The text in the meta keywords tag should work in conjunction with the text in your body copy. 
• Repeating the same word too often in the meta keywords tag can result in penalties for spamming.
• Do not list a plethora of keywords in your keyword tag. Pick a few of your top, targeted keywords or keyword phrases (10 or less) that align with your page content and don’t repeat.
• Remember that singular and plural forms are different.  Include the iterations.
• Like the title and description, keyword tags should be page specific.