Google doesn't use the 'keywords' meta tag
Do you spend time making sure your keywords meta tag is filled out correctly and to its fullest extent for each of your web pages?
Does your SEO specialist still include keyword meta tag research in their invoice?
According to Google you're wasting your time and money, because they don't use it for any purpose at all.
A recent announcement by Google in answer to questions posed in a public forum was that the 'keywords' meta tag has been so well used, in fact, over-used in their opinion, that it has lost all value as an effective SEO tool.
Google Webmaster Central Blog explains that it is so easy to abuse this meta tag, that they do not look at it. However, old myths die hard, as do SEO techniques and you will find plenty of SEO experts who would suggest that it doesn't hurt to include the tag, even if it isn't looked at by Google. After all, it's not the only search engine out there.
The Webmaster Central Blog goes on to say:"...we do sometimes use the "description" meta tag as the text for our search results snippets...
"...we do sometimes use the "description" meta tag as the text for our search results snippets...Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking."
The key point here being, the description meta tag isn't a ranking factor but, once you do get into a ranking position, the description meta tag can be very valuable in convincing potential customers to click the link when Google uses them as snippets. So your descriptions should be a short, concise and compelling summary of what users will see on that page.
The descriptions meta tag is also not a place to throw your keywords either. Remember, it is humans that are reading the results on Google - provide good quality content for them, not Search Engines.
