Our Digital Agency Gold Coast has analysed that a quick SEO trick use to be to reach for that long list of Keywords that related to your business. If you are a business with a website, you have more than likely been asked by your web design company to put together a jam packed smorgasbord of repeated phrases and words that relate to your industry. Typically, these are phrases that people google when trying to find you.
This ‘trick’ use to work… but not any more and this is why.
Google no longer uses the Keyword Meta tag to index your website. Having them can actually hinder your ranking. Google now sees Keywords simply as a ‘trick’.
Here is an explanation from Google’s Matt Cutts
“About a decade ago, search engines judged pages only on the content of web pages, not any so-called “off-page” factors such as the links pointing to a web page. In those days, keyword meta tags quickly became an area where someone could stuff often-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords. Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.” Matt Cutts – Google programmer
The downside to using Keywords now is that is allows your competitors to see what search phrases you are trying to target.
Here is a list of Meta Tags that Google does use in its Search Rankings.
