Recently, Danny Sullivan of Searchengineland.com wrote an article about the much maligned meta-keyword tag. It’s been common knowledge that Bing still uses this tag in its ranking algorithm, but to what end has been unclear. After years of speculation, Google finally announced in 2009 that is does not use the meta keywords tag in its algorithm. Since there’s apparent misalignment in the use of the meta keywords tag, the question is, does adding keywords in the meta-keyword tag help SEO? Does it hurt it? Where is the line between white hat tactics and black hat tricks?
After contacting Forrester Research on the issue, Danny found out the truth. Meta-keyword tags are not really used by Bing to find pages with relevant content. They use the tag as an initial check for website spaminess. Every good SEO knows not to "keyword stuff", so the idea is that if you keyword stuff your meta-tags, Bing will immediately flag your website as spammy and lower your rankings.
Danny’s correspondence with Forrester drove home this message:
“It sounds like you’re saying that you see a high correlation between crummy pages and people who use the meta keywords tag with garbage – that it’s a spam signal, not a ranking signal. If that’s the case, then I’d still advise people that you don’t use it for ranking purposes, but you might use it as a spam signal and that people simply shouldn’t use it.”
And Forrester’s response was:
“Yeah, you’re pretty much bang on Danny. In fact, it’s not like we’re actively trying to encourage folks to start using the tag. And you’re right – the scenario I describe is more of a spam signal, which ultimately leads to rankings (or not, as the case may be).”
Long story short, you can save yourself some anxiety by foregoing the meta-keywords tag. Its history of abuse has essentially turned it into a Spam Signal and not a Ranking Signal. Contact your SEO team to ensure that your website isn’t getting dinged by Bing or the other search engines.