The Meta Keywords Tag is NOT Dead

If you look around the Internet for very long for information about search engine optimization and meta tags, you'll find that the vast majority of results will say that you should forego using the "keywords" tag. The reasoning given is that the majority of search engines ignore it.

And that's true, the majority of search engines do ignore the meta keywords tag. But what about other websites such as directories? It seems to me that what people forget about when discussing meta tags is how other websites make use of those tags.

There are some directories on the web that categorize websites based on what is in the keywords tag in addition to the content of the website. By not including putting at least a few keywords in the appropriate meta tag, your website might be missing out on some traffic from people who are actively searching for your product.

Additionally, the keywords tag can help your website if you're using a light on-site search engine or a CMS that makes use of the keywords tag in indexing content. The keywords tag can be used as another pointer that a particular piece of content might be what your users are looking for, especially if you put a couple of common misspellings in there.

So don't ignore the meta keywords tag, but don't abuse it either. I'd say treat it as a tagging system of sorts and limit its use to 5-10 truly relevant keywords.