Meta Keywords SEO: The Internet's Saddest Little Meta Tag

Today you're gonna learn about the worst thingto happen to the internet, the meta-keywords tag.

This tag sucks.

We're gonna talk a little-bit about the metakeywords tag, why it's terrible, why you shouldn't use it.

At this point I'm supposed to tell you tostay for the whole video cause you're gonna learn some secret at the end, it's not true, just don't use meta-keywords tags, but if you want to learn more about why you shouldn'tuse them and what you should use instead, stay for the whole video.

I'm Tommy Griffith with clickminded.

com.

Let's get going.

All right, the meta-keywords tag, this tagsucks.

You should not be using this tag.

If you're doing a query for this, you're lookingfor more information on the meta-keywords tag, you might be new to digital marketing, or you might be new to search engine optimization, just want to clarify some of the misconceptionsout there on what this is.

Before we dig into that though, just a quickreminder, if you're looking up the meta-keywords tag, you're probably interested in searchengine optimization.

Keep in mind as we talk about this, searchoptimization is only one piece of digital marketing, so we're gonna dive into this, into meta-keywords and into search engine optimization general, but it's really onlyone piece of a more comprehensive digital marketing strategy.

So do keep that in mind and then any meta-tagat all, specifically meta-keywords, but any meta-tag at all is only one piece of SEO.

So as we talk about this, do keep that inmind.

This is just one component of a much largerpicture.

So meta-keywords are dead.

Do not use them.

The meta-keywords tag was really designedin 1995 for very archaic old search engines and some could argue that the rise of Googlewas actually because of older search engines reliant on this tag.

The basic idea was, web masters were designingpages and they were indicating to search engines what that page was about by populating themeta-keywords tag with the keywords they wanted to rank for.

Surprise, surprise.

Every single web master in the world spammedthis as hard as they could, right? So web masters were genuinely very disingenuousabout this.

Myself included in 1999.

Everyone that did it was.

They weren't showing .

.

.

they weren't usingrelevant keywords.

They were adding keywords that weren't necessary.

It was a land grab for traffic, right? There was a really great incentive to be superhonest because you wanted more traffic in general.

So the rise of Google .

.

.

Google was what, the 11th or 13th search engine.

It wasn't the first search engine, but Googlerealized this was a huge problem and basically started saying, “Let's stop relying on webmasters for this type of data.

Let's stop trusting web masters and let'slook at a more comprehensive picture to try and rank documents.

” So let's look at all the elements on the page.

Let's look at all the links pointing backto that page.

Google kind of got their start by saying, “Let's stop trusting web masters so much.

” Meta-keywords is an inherent problem in this.

Meta-keywords were used by search enginesfrom 1995 to 2009.

It's rumored that most search engines reallystopped using this well before 2009, but 2009 was the year that Google categorically said, “We no longer use this as a ranking factor.

” They probably weren't using it very much atall starting in 2000, 2001, but they were overused.

They were too easy to spam with and almostall search engines have discontinued support for this meta-tag.

If you want to take a look at what it lookslike, let's say we were optimizing an emoji site.

Trying to rank for different terms or on emojislike blue emojis, red emojis, smiley emojis, sad emojis, this is how it would look.

My meta-name equals keywords, content keyword, keyword, keyword and this would be in the head of your document.

Long story short, don't use meta-keywords.

Use this SEO checklist instead.

We have an SEO checklist down here for you.

I hope this was helpful.

If it was useful, go ahead and click subscribedown below to get even more digital marketing tactics and tips from us.

And I would love a comment from you.

What do you think about meta-keywords, whatdo you think about this video, is it helpful, do leave a comment if you're on YouTube.

I read every single one.

Finally, as I mentioned we have an SEO checklistfor you.

Go ahead and click that link down below toclickminded.

com to get a real SEO checklist on how to really optimize your site for trafficin a way that modern search engines will use, not the meta-keywords tag.

Thanks a lot.

.