Keyword Tags Not Just Dead But Risky

While I do NOT agree with the author of this linked article that keyword tags are "Risky" since they show your competitors your strategy - because your keyword strategy should be right there in the form of visible page text for all to see! You can't hide keyword strategy from anyone!

Hiding your "strategy" by hiding your keywords in the metatags is absurd. People have always had the bizarre notion that others can't tell what they are doing if they can't see the metatags. Some oddballs even use IP delivery (cloaking) to hide their metatags from the public while delivering them to the search engines. How ridiculous can you get? Your keyword strategy should be laid out there on the page text so the search engines can see it. You just can't expect the spiders to rank your site well because you gave the crawlers a "secret sauce" in your metatags. Absolutely freakish notion.

I do agree that keyword tags are worthless. I wrote an article two years ago in September of 2003 saying the same thing.

That got used in dozens of places

I've preached endlessly to clients to PUT THE KEYWORDS IN THE BODY TEXT for as long as I can remember and this continues to come up endlessly. KEYWORD metatags are dead. I still use them for those minor engines that do use them, but most don't - including Google.

I just can't believe anyone is still paying attention to keyword tags and worse yet, that they don't know that important keywords need to be ON THE PAGE in VISIBLE TEXT if they expect to rank for them.

Here's another article in that vein.

I'd like to bonk people over the head with these articles engraved on stone tablets like the 10 commandments.

I just signed a new client yesterday that uses the SAME 300 word list of keywords in her metatags on every page on her site. When we talked with the programmer in India by MSN Messenger at midnight last night, he groaned when I said we needed unique TITLE tags and (while you're at it) unique keywords tags (for those engines that do use them) and unique description tags to match text ON THE PAGE of every single product page. The only reason the client is willing to do this is that it only costs only $10 an hour for them to do it from India. I send instructions and they implement.

Yes, keyword tags are dead ... again. ;-)