Meta keywords are a type of meta tag that webmasters used to provide search engines with a list of keywords that represent the content of a web page. However, over time, this tag became less relevant and widely abused, leading search engines like Google to announce that they no longer use the meta keywords tag as a ranking factor. Nevertheless, the concept is still significant from a historical perspective.
When meta keywords were popular, the idea was straightforward: by listing relevant keywords in the tag, you could inform search engines about the main topics of the page. To implement meta keywords, webmasters would insert them into the HTML of the page in the following manner:
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3">
The “content” attribute would be filled with a comma-separated list of relevant keywords for the page.
Despite its phased-out importance, it’s crucial to note that using this tag incorrectly or attempting to “stuff” it with unrelated keywords could have been detrimental to a site’s ranking. Today, instead of focusing on meta keywords, SEO efforts are better spent on producing quality content, optimizing meta titles and descriptions, and establishing relevant backlinks.