Meta Keywords

No longer a major factor in search engine rankings, Meta Keywords are now used to “outline” your keyword targeting and provide a basis of what each page is focused on.  The primary reason for Google and other search engines to no longer focus on the keyword meta tags is due to all the “spam” websites that have abused this area badly.  For years and years many black hatters would use “hidden or cloaked” keywords and links.  These became very spammy because you could literally get any page to rank for ANY keyword term, if you just spammed hundreds of cloaked keywords all over the page.  Content was not being examined and made relevant as much, spamming was destroying the search engine results.   Nowadays using cloaked text or links is almost a sure way to get de-indexed and banned with 3 months of any competitive Google keyword results.  Don’t do it. But since then, its best to focus on using keywords similar to descriptions, helping the search spiders acknowledge what the focus and concepts that a page is targeting to get better search engine ranking results that are targeted to the audience relevant.

SEO rules for Meta Keywords

• Research!! Know what your targets are and where you can be successful
• Look natural; do not repeat (spam) the same keywords on every page or duplicates
• Vary tenses and phrases
• Keep research keywords multiple tiers, the deeper you dig the more you can sculpt your pages
• Target keywords that have low-medium competition in search engine page results

Examples:

Target Page: Baseball Equipment Sale
Meta Keywords: baseball equipment sale, discount baseball gear, leather gloves, professional jerseys, hats, caps, baseball bats
Now although we have repeated “baseball” 3 times in this keyword section, we made it look very natural by combining the “main target” keyword inside two or three word phrases.  This is how we are protecting our site from looking like a “spam” or poor quality site, keeping it natural but targeting specific keyword strategies.  You’ll be incorporating these throughout your content as well, so stay away from any exact duplicate tags or titles, the keywords will come up multiple times and make the impact your looking for naturally as your whole page is spidered.
Don’t lose much time or focus working with the meta keywords, it should be really simple based on what content you are creating and what your keyword research is based off of.  Make sure to use a SEO plugin for WordPress or Joomla to help you in your SEO efforts, it’s great to have simple shortcut boxes for the keywords, anchors, and more. Simplifying your life and saving you time, so you can spend the important time working on content, sales, and lead generation online.