Meta keywords are a thing of the past - and here's why

And no, these are not little old Web sites. New websites of large organizations also use meta keywords. Since I haven't recommended them for years and often get the question "why not?", it's high time for an article on meta name keywords.

What are meta keywords?

Meta keywords (also called meta name keywords, HTML keywords or meta tag keywords) were once created so that you could tell search engines which keywords are important to your pages.

This should then make it easier for search engines to determine which words you should be shown on. For which keywords your page is relevant (according to you). These keywords are not visible to visitors and are processed at the backend (in the source code) of your website.

Meta keyword tag in the HTML: this is what it looks like

The meta keyword is found in the HTML of your website and looks like this:

<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2, keyword 3">

That's all it is! And to make it even more tangible, I've also included a screenshot of a website that uses the meta name keywords tag in the HTML:

How do you find out if your website is using the meta tag keywords?

There are 2 ways to find out if your website is using meta keywords. Both ways are literally 20 seconds of work.

Way 1: Rankwatch Meta Tag Analyzer tool

Go to the Rankwatch Meta Tag Analyzer, enter the URL of your website and click on "Analyze meta data.

If you see the heading "Keywords" there with a word or a number of words at "Value," then your website is using meta keywords.

Way 2: Display page source within Google Chrome

Way 2 can only be used if you use Google Chrome. Within Google Chrome, go to your website, right-click and then "Show Page Source.

Next, click CMD + F on Mac or CNTRL + F on Windows to open the search function within the browser. Then type in "keywords.

If you then see a result (like the example below), that means the website has the HTML tag for meta keywords.

No! Meta keywords and the Yoast focus keyphrase have nothing to do with each other

Within the WordPress SEO plugin Yoast, you have an option to enter a focus keyphrase. This is the keyword you want Yoast to check your text for.

Yoast's meta name keywords and focus keyphrase have nothing to do with each other. By now I have heard 5-10 times that people think the two are related. Especially when people have been working with websites for a long time and think meta keywords are still important.

This is not crazy, of course, because it looks like Yoast also allows you to choose a keyword. Only Yoast never puts this keyword in the source code.

Google does not like meta keywords (due to keyword stuffing)

From the title, you've already read that meta keywords are a thing of the past. Why do you wonder?

Well, the idea, of course, is very nice. That you can say 1-to-1 to search engines (read: Google) which keyword you want to rank for.

But what if everyone uses that keyword in the meta keywords? And what if then everyone also starts stuffing the meta keywords with dozens or hundreds of other keywords.

So then you have no use for it at all. And since it was being abused so much and used in the wrong ways, search engines decided to stop looking at it.

Advice from OMA: why you should stop using meta keywords

Our advice is really quite simple: stay away from meta keywords. Should your website use them, I even recommend taking them out.

So does this mean you can be punished if you use them? At least Google doesn't.