I finally killed off the keywords from this site today. It’s time. My problem is, I have been building sites for too long, and it has simply been a hard habit to break. I’m not afraid to use the delete button though, so bye bye! Maybe the page will load a little faster for you now.
When I originally put this site up, I made a hack to create the meta keyword list out of my post tags. Thinking about it now though, it almost seems like search engine spam. I display the keywords in a tag list on the posts page, why do I need to remind bots about them in a keyword list? Was I simply trying to bump the keyword count up? No, I was simply just trying to do it the right way.
For Whom?
That last paragraph sentence is what got me to thinking though. For what or whom, was I trying to use the keyword list correctly for? It’s not Google or Bing. Yahoo is known to read it, but Bing will take care of that soon. So who is left? What out there on the web needs a keyword list? If there is a good reason, I will put it back. The reason does not have to be a search engine.
Your Input!!!
Please make a comment below, and let myself and other readers know about any value you may be aware of for using the meta keyword list. It appears worthless at the moment.
- September 30, 2009
- Posted by Robert Campbell at 9:39 am
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- keyword, meta
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I use them everywhere… which may also be a habit to break.
I always thought that they were useful and used by search engines – but now your the second web developer I’ve come across to state they don’t do much – and that page titles are the most important part of your page!
Mr. Cutts from Google says Google doesn’t look at them. Bing doesn’t look at them either. So right now they simply appear to be a waste of html. Yahoo pages actually have them, but it’s for themselves. It’s so their ads can be targeted.
Meta tags are not required but I still use them.
For sure keep using the rest of them. I only stopped using the keywords because there appears that nobody or anything even looks at them. That is the point of this post…
Does anyone know a good or even small reason to have the keyword meta included?