In the beginning of the internet era the keyword META tags had a huge impact on your search engine ranking.

The search engines back then were simple compared to the search engines of our time. Not much research had been spend on the task of a search engine: To come up with the most relevant pages for any query for a huge number of very different pages.

Link popularity hasn’t been thought of yet and lexicographical analysis was in its infancy.

So the first search engines was looking for things that could fairly easily be recognized in a web page.

The Title – Visible to both visitors and the search engines. The Title played – and still plays – a very big role in your search engine ranking.

The Headings – Visible to both visitors and search engines. Headings played – and still plays – a role in your search engine ranking. From a content point of view the heading is great because it tells a great deal about the subject of the page.

The Description - A META tag just like the keyword META tag. Visible only to the search engines – and to visitors through the search engine listings.

The keyword META tag - Visible ONLY to the search engines – the content of the keyword META tag doesn’t even show up on a search engine listing.

The body text - Visible to both visitors and search engines. The most important part of the page, as seen from the visitors point of view.

Comments - Visible ONLY to the search engines. In the beginning a comment played much the same role as the headings – to give pointers about the overall contents of the page.

Abuse of the keyword META tag

It didn’t take long before webmasters started abusing the keyword META tag. They could put anything in, that would boost their rankings, and it wouldn’t interfere with the content of the page.

So as the abuse of the keyword META tag grew the search engines started paying less and less attention to it.

Is the keyword META tag obsolete?

This article about the keyword META tag – and other articles related to keyword research and search engine ranking can be found at Keyword Optimization Tools