Meta keywords are an HTML meta tag that was historically used to signal the primary keywords a webpage was intended to rank for. Website owners would list multiple keywords within the tag to indicate topic relevance to search engines. This approach was common in early SEO when algorithms relied heavily on declared signals rather than contextual analysis.
Over time, meta keywords became widely abused through excessive and irrelevant keyword inclusion. As a result, major search engines stopped using the meta keywords tag as a ranking factor. Today, it has no impact on organic visibility for leading search platforms and is effectively ignored.
Meta keywords now serve no practical SEO purpose. Modern search engines rely on content quality, intent satisfaction, semantic understanding, and link signals rather than self declared keyword lists. Continuing to use meta keywords does not improve rankings and may indicate outdated optimisation practices.
Advanced
Meta keywords are still parsed by browsers but not used in ranking algorithms by major search engines. Some minor or internal search systems may read the tag, but this does not apply to mainstream organic search.
From a risk and governance perspective, meta keywords can expose competitive intelligence by revealing target terms publicly. Best practice is to omit the tag entirely and focus optimisation efforts on visible content, metadata that still matters, and structural signals that influence relevance.
Relevance
- Has no impact on modern search rankings.
- Indicates outdated SEO practices when used.
- Provides no competitive advantage.
- Can expose keyword targeting unnecessarily.
- Distracts from effective optimisation efforts.
Applications
- Legacy website audits.
- SEO training and education.
- Technical cleanup projects.
- Governance and best practice enforcement.
- Platform migration reviews.
Metrics
- Presence of meta keywords tags.
- Removal completion across templates.
- Crawl and index consistency after cleanup.
- Reduction of obsolete metadata usage.
- Technical SEO audit scores.
Issues
- Wasted optimisation effort.
- Signals outdated SEO knowledge.
- Exposes targeting strategy publicly.
- No measurable ranking benefit.
- Can complicate template maintenance.
Example
A business website retained meta keywords across hundreds of pages from an old CMS template. During a technical audit, the tags were removed with no negative impact on rankings. Focus shifted to content quality and internal linking, resulting in improved organic performance.