Some people say "keywords" in <head>...</head> is important for search engine, it can help you to improve PR. But some articles say it is not important at all. <meta> is out of date. I don't know which is true? What do you think of it?
Absolutely yes. Very useful Too many 'gurus' telling you to ignore meta tag keywords Just look at the source code of websites ranking well and you will have your answer
People say that they are completely useless.. Others say they are useful. Adding them certainly wont hurt you.
well,they certainly won't improve your pagerank, whoever told you that has no understanding of what Pagerank is - it's calculated according to backlinks and backlinks only. Google ignores keyword tags - here's the list of tags they consider important - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=79812&query=metatags&topic=&type= I know somewhere in the offiical google blog they say even more explicitly that they ignore keyword tags, I'll add the reference if I can find it quickly. EDIT - here you go -in the comments Hi John, I notice that you do not mention the keywords meta tag - does this mean that Google totally ignores it? December 4, 2007 3:37 AM John Mueller said... Thanks for asking, Glen! You're right in that we generally ignore the contents of the "keywords" meta tag. As with other possible meta tags, feel free to place it on your pages if you can use it for other purposes - it won't count against you. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/answering-more-popular-picks-meta-tags.html
now that is interesting. I personally still feel that they are of value however the real test would be finding a site that still ranks in the top 10 of SERPS but has no keyword tags.
It actually helps the search engine bots to understand and crawl your site better and you can use meta tags to stress and relate the important information that you want the bots to know. I don't know about others but I use it anyway.
Did Google officially deny Keyword Meta Tag importance? "No", "Never".... then how could one say that Keyword Meta Tag in not useful or useless only on personal experience? It's different factor that Keyword Meta Tag doesn't play so important role that Page Title and Keyword Meta Tag play, BUT no one could deny the use of Keyword Meta Tag...!
Well, yes. Yes they did - ^ look^ in the post 2 above you where i've copied a quote and given you the link to the official google blog. Try reading it. "ConsultantSEOService"? - Dear God In Heaven! Talk about misrepresenting yourself!
As far as importance to google is concerned... yeah... it is not that important... right now anyways. Not to long ago, google changed up and sites started having issues with duplicate content putting them in what was once known as the 'supplemental index'. Want to know what saved some people from this happening to them? Their META data.. more specifically the description meta. Every factor counts, and the difference in ranking is measured by minor differences between sites. If you make it to the TOP 5 and you are up against 5 other sites, with all things being equal, except that YOU used META data and they listened to the gurus and ignored it, well guess what.. you win. What everyone seems to forget in optimization is that there are other search engines out there too. MSN still uses the mega data, as does yahoo. So use it, and use it wisely.
The way I read the quote that you are referring to is WTF is that supposed to mean? You either ignore them or you don't... there is no such thing as generally ignore. lol, that is a classic oxymoron. Then to go on and say "as with other possible meta tags" Huh? WTF <[B]meta[/B] name="keywords" content=""/> <[B]meta[/B] name="description" content=""/> <[B]META [/B]NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> Code (markup): Well do they "generally ignore" the description and robots tag to? So if you could find where they actually say they do not take any notice of the meta keywords tag, that would be better Cheers James
Meta tags have nothing to do with PR! Google may not use them but I'm sure Yahoo and MSN do? They don't hurt as long as you don't keyword stuff them.
Do they deny it's importance? Yes, they don't include it in the list of meta tags they recommend and they have said they generally ignore it. Did I say they said they said anything other than that? No I did not - if you want a more cast-iron answer from google, ask Matt Cutts.
Like many people agree, the meta keywords is not important in google but for many it is a habit to just fill it in; with crossed fingers because other smaller, maybe local search engine might still use it. For example in Holland you have a lot Dutch search engines nobody of you have ever heard about, and they are still used by a minority, but still it is again some extra free traffic you might get. On the other side, if you don't have time for it you should just leave it alone. Both doesn't hurt anyway.
Metas still useful but it has lower percentage of how important it is. Anyways, it wont hurt you if you put in your website.