The Meta Keywords tag is a meta tag in the HTML language. This means that it is a tag that is found in the HTML source code of a page (therefore not visible to the Internet user) and which indicates to the search engine certain information (certain metadata).
Present in the “Head” part of the source code, it was presented in this form:
<meta name = “keywords” content = “keyword 1, keyword 2…”>
It was customary to indicate a maximum of 100 keywords or 1000 characters, the first limit reached being the correct one.
In this case, it indicates that the words included in this tag are the keywords of the page. It was a beacon widely used in SEO.
Because it has been used too abusively (filling in a list of keywords), the engines have deprived it of all function. Google would never even give it any SEO value.
For more than 10 years the words it contains are no longer taken into account for referencing, and this whatever the engine.
With one small exception: Yandex, the Russian search engine, would be the only one to analyze the words of this tag to assess the relevance of a page on a query.
Nevertheless, many sites still have well-filled keywords tags. It is not uncommon to find more than 30 keywords (often not directly related to each other). This clearly reflects a very fashionable practice a few years ago.
The SEOs placed a maximum of words in this tag which was taken into account for the calculation of the positioning by Google.
A risk if Meta Keyword for SEO?
No risk of Panda sanction since Google does not take this tag into account. On the other hand, Bing indicates that filling this tag with too many keywords could be considered an abusive practice that would disadvantage the site in question.
However, it seems that it no longer takes into account the meta keywords since 2012.
Whatever the end dates of the keywords tag and all the debates around this tag, one thing is clear: it is useless!
Our Advices on Meta Keywords
Why Meta Keywords Tag is Useless in ([year])?
Writing a lot of common search terms in the meta keyword field of the source code used to be one of the first SEO measures, because search engines at the time, due to their technical capabilities, placed a lot of emphasis on the metadata field of an HTML page.
They also used this point to calculate search engine positioning while accounting for other factors.
For example, if the meta keyword “SEO” was regularly inserted, the website would most likely rank well for all searches containing “SEO.” That was, however, prior to the invention of Google.
Other search engines eventually realized that rating pages solely on factors that are not visible to users made little sense. So, now it’s useless.