Meta Keywords

Meta Keywords: Yes or No?

[Simon Jester]

I've been advised that Google no longer pays attention to Meta Keywords at all, due to their abuse.

I've also been told, though, that any meta keywords used should be reflected in the text on the page.

Anyone have any idea which it is? Should I be concerned with the keywords for Google search results, or not?

Thanks in advance -

[schenz]

The way I understand Google and Meta Keywords and Meta Description is that Google ignores them. No penalty and no bonus. I recommend to use them so that it will help you on the search engines that continue to make use of them, just follow the basic rules against spamming.

[robjones]

I've found that Google will use descriptions for pages without any other content eg. for frames.
Yahoo! also places a fairly large emphasis on their importance in their help pages, so they're definitely worth adding.

[creativearc]

Yeah, SEO can be a funny thing. My personal (outdated) site is a years old, 100% flash and has almost no text. I'm #1 on google (and probably other search engines) w/o any effort.

Of course, my name is not a competitive keyword area by any stretch. It does show you how you can't put your eggs in one basket and assume one strategy is the silver bullet.

[Simon Jester]

I haven't been paying too much attention to my keywords, as I've been concentrating on optimizing for Google. Guess that would explain why Google has me ranked just fine, but Yahoo doesn't like me at all.

Guess I'll start working on the keywords again.

[adfree]

Some time late last year I remember GoogleGuy stating that "it would not hurt" to use them and advised to do so moderately. Maybe they take them into account at some occasions or mildly in some tricky cases like flash sites, heavy pics etc.