Back in the 1990's, the search engines depended a lot on what was included in a web page's meta keyword tags. Meta keywords died off in importance long ago. In fact, although we add or modify dozens (and sometimes hundreds) of pages on DUIAttorney.com each week, we no longer add meta keywords. This article will briefly explain why, and hopefully save you some wasted time or money in regards to keywords.
For those you who are unfamiliar with what meta tags are, they are data descriptors that are not viewable by the human eye in a browser. These tags carry various instructions, mostly to the search engines, about what to do on or with the web page. A "meta keyword" tag contains a list of keywords, separated by commas, that the author of the page wants the search engines to index the page for.
When search engines were much less sophisticated than they are today, they relied heavily on meta keywords to determine which phrases or concepts a page should rank for. Back then the results returned for searches were much less relevant and useful to their human users than they are today. Why? Because the search engines relied heavily on human authors of web pages to tell them what was relevant.
It didn't take much back then for people who wanted to rank for keywords that were unrelated to their site to realize how to do it. Simply put, stuff the meta keyword tag with irrelevant keywords.
Why would anybody want to do that? Here's an example: Say you have a web page that isn't very popular. You want more traffic, but your site is about drunk driving in Apline County, California. With a population of around 1,200 people, not much of a demand for your page, right? Well, what if you stuffed your keywords with phrases like Los Angeles, or New York to attract larger populations, or even with the name of a celebrity to attract a wider demographic? It worked in the infancy of the internet, but today meta keyword stuffing no longer works (thank goodness). In fact, it can cause a web page or an entire site to be devastated in the rankings.
There are three major search engines that comprise the vast majority of search market share. They are Google, Bing and Yahoo. Google has an overwhelming market share, although Bing (Microsoft's search engine) has a good product and may be slowly gaining ground. So when it comes to your web strategy, it just makes sense to look at what Google is doing, first and always.
If your webmaster is still charging you to optimize your meta keywords, it's time you gently break the news to him or her that, frankly, you are not interested. If they try to argue with you (and I have actually talked to several attorneys recently who have been, apparantly, brainwashed by their webmasters), you might point them to an article on the Google Webmaster Blog entitled Google does not use the keyword tag in web ranking. A good webmaster should not worry, because there are still plenty of other meta tags to tend to. Here's a basic list of meta tags and what they do. There are many more than this too.
Here's a video featuring Google's Matt Cutts that explains it:
It's funny, because I have recently seen DUI attorneys stuffing the names of their more seasoned or well known competitors into their keyword tag, presumably hoping to divert people searching for the other lawyer.
I've heard webmasters recently make the argument that keywords should still be used because there is a chance that Google and other search engines might decide to use them again in the future. While that is possible, I don't see why it's worth investing in now. In all reality, your website will be completely redone every two or three years anyways. Plus, it's very easy to go back in and add keywords later should the need ever arise. Why waste money on it now?
If meta keyword stuffing was a problem in the past, and meta keywords were eliminated to return better results, what future purpose could they serve? I could see a potential for sites that are algorithmically trusted to be allowed to pass some weight from the meta keywords to influence search placement. They can also be used for custom searches, but this would be useful only in larger websites. The typical DUI law firm's website with 10 to 150 pages of content should not need a custom search solution.
It's your money and time, and you can spend either or both on meta keywords. But don't be surprised when it doesn't work, and don't let your webmaster make excuses or blame it on you.
My name is Dan Jaffe. I recently retired from practicing DUI law after more than a decade of running a law firm and using the internet as my firm's primary source of business.