What is a meta keyword and is it still relevant for SEO?
Stevia Putri
Stanley Nicholas
Last edited January 12, 2026
Expert Verified
The meta keyword tag is one of those topics that causes a lot of confusion in the SEO community. It’s a throwback to the early days of the internet, and many people still wonder if it holds any secret value for ranking higher on Google. The short answer is no, but the long answer explains a lot about how search engines have changed over the years.
This guide will walk you through what a meta keyword is, look at its history from a key ranking factor to an obsolete tag, and explain why major search engines have left it behind. More importantly, we'll cover the modern on-page factors that you should be focusing on instead.
Spending time on outdated practices like meta keywords just isn't productive. Your energy is better spent on things that actually affect search performance, like creating great content and improving user experience. Modern AI platforms can help with this by generating content that is properly optimized from the start. For instance, the eesel AI blog writer creates articles with correctly structured headings, meta descriptions, and other important on-page elements, so you don't even have to think about obsolete tags.
What is a meta keyword tag
The meta keywords tag is a type of meta tag found in the HTML code of a webpage, specifically inside the <head> section. Its original job was to give search engines a list of keywords and phrases that were relevant to the page's content. The idea was to help tell search engines what a page was about in a very direct way.
In the HTML, the tag looks like this:
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword one, keyword two, keyword three">
These tags aren't visible to people browsing the page. They exist only in the background, within the page's source code, for search engine crawlers to read.
The original idea made sense at the time. Early search engines had simpler algorithms and couldn't analyze the full context of a page like they can today. They depended on these user-provided tags as a main signal to categorize and index content, matching it to search queries. A website owner could just list the topics covered, and search engines would use that list as a guide.
The history of meta keywords: From ranking signal to obsolescence
Back in the late 1990s, the meta keyword tag was a core part of search engine optimization. Webmasters could fill this tag with terms they wanted to rank for, and early search engines like AltaVista and Infoseek used them as a key signal for ranking pages. It was a straightforward system that gave content creators a lot of control over how their pages were indexed.
But that simplicity was also its weakness. The system was easy to manipulate through a practice called "keyword stuffing." People quickly figured out they could load the tag with dozens, or even hundreds, of keywords to cheat the rankings. This often included irrelevant but popular terms or just repeating the same keyword over and over. This tactic lowered the quality of search results, as pages stuffed with misleading keywords started to outrank genuinely useful content. Users would click a link expecting one thing and get something else entirely.
As search engine algorithms became more sophisticated, they started relying less on these easily gamed tags and more on complex signals like link analysis and content quality. The big shift happened on September 21, 2009, when Google officially announced it would no longer use the keywords meta tag in its web search ranking algorithm. In a post on its official blog, Google stated that it had already been ignoring the tag for "many years" before the announcement because it was so often abused and had become a source of spam instead of a helpful signal.
This was a major change for the SEO industry. It marked the end of an era where ranking could be swayed by simple HTML tags and pushed the focus toward creating high-quality, user-focused content that search engines could analyze for relevance on their own.
Do search engines still use the meta keyword tag?
For the major search engines that handle most web traffic, the meta keyword tag has no direct positive effect on organic search rankings. While some smaller or niche search engines might still look at it, focusing on them instead of giants like Google and Bing is not an effective strategy.
Here’s a quick summary of how different search engines treat the meta keyword tag today, based on their public statements and general SEO knowledge.
| Search Engine | Stance on Meta Keywords | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Completely ignored. It has no effect on indexing and ranking. | Google Search Central | |
| Bing | Not used as a ranking factor. Abusing it with keyword stuffing can hurt you and be treated as a spam signal. | Bing Project Manager (via Data Driven Labs) |
| Yahoo | Indexed but receives the "lowest ranking signal." Used only as a last resort for ranking when no other signals are present. | Yahoo (via Data Driven Labs) |
| Baidu | Previously considered relevant, but is now deprecated and doesn’t directly affect rankings in 2026. | SEO Sherpa |
Besides being ineffective, using meta keywords today can also create some unnecessary risks.
- Revealing Your Strategy: When you add meta keywords, you're making your keyword targets public. Competitors can easily look at your page's source code to see exactly which terms you're trying to rank for, giving them a clear look at your SEO strategy.
- Potential Spam Signal: While Google ignores the tag, other search engines like Bing might see keyword stuffing in it as a spam signal. This could potentially damage your site's credibility on their platform.
- Wasted Effort: The time you spend researching, choosing, and adding these tags gives you no real SEO benefit on the search engines that matter. This effort is much better spent on modern optimization tasks that actually make a difference.
<meta name='keywords'> hasn't been relevant for over a decade. No major search engine uses it. On-site search engines can be configured to use it, but it is rare. The problem with using them is it gives you a false sense that it works. They are therefore worse than a waste of time they are detrimental.
What to focus on instead of meta keywords
Instead of chasing an obsolete tag, a good SEO strategy in 2026 means focusing on the on-page elements that search engines and users actually care about. These factors help search algorithms understand your content's context and quality while making the user experience better.
1. Title tags and meta descriptions
The title tag is still a very important on-page ranking factor. It tells search engines and users what your page is about and heavily influences the title link shown in search results. A well-written meta description doesn't directly affect rankings, but it does have a big impact on click-through rates (CTR). According to Google's SEO Starter Guide, a good description can be used as the snippet in search results, encouraging users to click.
Best Practices:
- Titles: Keep them unique, clear, and concise (under 60 characters is a good guideline). Include your primary keyword naturally, ideally near the beginning.
- Descriptions: Write a compelling summary of what the page offers. Keep it under 160 characters to avoid it being cut off and think of it as an ad for your content.
2. Well-structured headings (H1, H2, H3)
Heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) create a logical structure for your content. This does two things: it helps users scan the page to find information quickly, and it helps search engines understand the page's layout and the relationship between different topics. A clear hierarchy makes your content more readable and accessible.
Best Practices:
- Use one, and only one, H1 tag per page for the main title.
- Use H2s to break the content into major sections and H3s for subsections within them.
- Include your target keywords and related terms naturally within headings where they make sense.
3. High-quality, helpful content
Content is still the most important factor in SEO. All the technical tweaks in the world won't help a page rank if its content is thin, unhelpful, or irrelevant. Google's guidelines consistently prioritize content that is helpful, reliable, people-first. This means your content should be well-researched, provide real value, and directly answer what the user was searching for.
Best Practices:
- Focus on creating valuable content that shows experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).
- Structure the content for easy reading with short paragraphs, bullet points, and images.
- Make sure all information is current and factually correct.
4. Image alt text
Alternative text, or alt text, is an HTML attribute added to image tags. Its main purpose is for accessibility, as it describes the image for screen readers used by visually impaired people. However, it also provides useful SEO context. Alt text helps search engines understand what an image is about, which allows it to rank in image search and adds to the overall topical relevance of the page.
Best Practices:
- Be descriptive but brief. Describe what is in the image.
- Include relevant keywords where they fit naturally, but don't stuff them. For example, "alt="chart showing meta keyword usage decline"" is much better than "alt="meta keyword keyword meta tag seo"".
For a definitive answer directly from the source, here's a short video from Google Search Central explaining their stance on the meta keyword tag and whether it has any impact on search rankings.
Google Search Central officially explains that the meta keywords tag has no impact on search rankings.
Automating modern SEO with the eesel AI blog writer
Managing all of these modern on-page elements for every article can be a manual and time-consuming job. Making sure every title tag, meta description, heading structure, and piece of content is perfectly optimized takes a lot of effort, especially if you're producing content regularly.
This is where automation can be a big help. The eesel AI blog writer is a platform built to handle this work for you. Instead of just giving you a block of text, it creates a complete, publish-ready blog post with all the important on-page SEO elements already optimized.
Key Features:
- SEO Structure: It automatically generates an article with an optimized H1, a logical hierarchy of H2 and H3 headings, a compelling title tag, and an SEO-friendly meta description.
- Rich Content: It does more than just text. The tool includes automatic assets like AI-generated images, infographics, and data tables that improve user engagement.
- Social Proof: It finds and embeds relevant YouTube videos and real quotes from Reddit forums, adding a layer of authenticity to the content.
- AEO Optimized: The content is structured not just for traditional search but also for AI Answer Engines like Google AI Overviews and Perplexity, getting your content ready for the future of search.
By automating these tedious but important tasks, you can spend your time on strategy and promotion instead of manual optimization.
Final thoughts on what is a meta keyword: Focus on what matters
The main takeaway is straightforward: the meta keyword tag is an outdated piece of SEO history. For major search engines like Google and Bing, it provides no ranking benefit and can even carry small risks if you misuse it.
Instead of putting any energy into this old tag, shift your efforts to the on-page elements that actually matter to search engines and users in 2026. Concentrate on creating high-quality, helpful content, writing compelling title tags and meta descriptions, building a logical heading structure, and making sure your site is accessible.
To see how modern SEO can be made easier, you can generate a complete, optimized article in just a few minutes. Try the eesel AI blog writer for free and see how you can scale your content production while making sure every post is built to perform in today's search algorithms.
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Article by
Stevia Putri
Stevia Putri is a marketing generalist at eesel AI, where she helps turn powerful AI tools into stories that resonate. She’s driven by curiosity, clarity, and the human side of technology.
