How important are keyword meta tags for SEO?

Posted on May 4, 2009 by Bill Wren

Today is too hectic to write or edit on a blog properly so I decided to post an email I sent to a friend regarding keyword meta tags and SEO. It’s probably poorly written and confusing, but I sent it off in a hurry. At the heart of it is the question, “How important are keywords in the header as far as search engines go?” Has their significance decreased – maybe gone altogether? The email is as follows:

I had a question/comment that came up today when I was looking at a client’s web site. They’re using WordPress and the plugin All-in-One SEO, as I do on my blog and as I see you do as well. I’ve always been under the impression that keyword (meta tags) were one of the significant SEO aspects and, with one of my blogs in particular, I’ve been frustrated by not being able to add tags (which become keywords) in the add page option with WordPress. It seemed as if I could add keywords for the main page of my blog and, for individual posts, it pulled the tags I made for each as the keywords (meta name=”keywords”). But not for pages because in the create a page interface, there was no place to add them.

So what I had were individual pages that, within the All in one SEO tags, had description but no keyword meta tags. I also saw this on my client’s pages (even on his home page, which was a static page). And I notice it on yours as well (not the home though). Under Services for example, when I look at source and see the code, I see the SEO tags and within them description and canonical but no keywords. Is this intentional? Are keywords less important for SEO, or is this because they can’t be added?

(See this blog post on the subject from Search Engine Journal: The Importance of Keyword Meta Tag in SEO.)

One reason I ask is because, being frustrated by this, I finally found a plugin that allows me to add tags (keywords) for static pages and All-in-One SEO appears to be pulling them for keywords for the individual pages. In case you’re interested, the plugin is Simple Tags and it’s located here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-tags/

When creating a page, it adds a field for tags at the top of the right hand column. Also, at the bottom of the “Add Page” interface it adds a few tools for suggested tags (which I haven’t found very useful).

Anyway … I wasn’t sure if my understanding of keywords and SEO was off or whether the difficulty in adding tags to static pages was the reason so many sites using WordPress don’t seem to have keywords for certain pages.

(Final note: I am not a WordPress expert, so this whole post may be wildly uninformed for someone who knows what they’re doing. I’m just a schmo who fools around with it on his blog because it’s more interesting to do it myself. You learn more.)

About Bill Wren

Writer, editor, social media practitioner and observer of how and where people connect and engage online.
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  • http://writelife.net/ Bill

    I should add that, from my gleanings, it appears keyword meta tags have decreased in importance due to abuse but their usefulness is probably not altogether gone.

  • http://writelife.net Bill

    I should add that, from my gleanings, it appears keyword meta tags have decreased in importance due to abuse but their usefulness is probably not altogether gone.