Meta Keywords: Dead SEO Relic or Hidden Opportunity?
If you’ve been in marketing for more than a few years, you’ve probably heard conflicting advice about meta keywords. Some say they’re completely useless. Others whisper that certain search engines still care. And a few clever marketers have found creative ways to repurpose them for internal strategy.
In The 7th Club, we don’t follow dogma—we follow data. Let’s separate fact from fiction and decide once and for all whether meta keywords deserve a place in your workflow.
What Are Meta Keywords?
Meta keywords are an HTML tag that was originally designed to give search engines a list of terms a page was relevant to. They live in the <head> section of a webpage and are invisible to visitors.
Here’s what they look like:
<meta name="keywords" content="seo, search engine optimization, marketing strategy"/>
In the early days of SEO, some people abused this tag by stuffing hundreds of keywords. Eventually, major search engines stopped trusting it. But the tag still exists—and in some corners of the web, it’s still used.
Do Search Engines Still Use Meta Keywords?
Let’s go engine by engine.
No. Google hasn’t used meta keywords for ranking since at least 2009. Matt Cutts (then head of Google’s Webspam team) confirmed it over a decade ago, and nothing has changed since. Google ignores the tag completely for ranking.
Bing
No. In 2014, Bing declared the meta keywords tag “dead in terms of SEO value.” They later reiterated that they exclude and ignore it. It is not a ranking factor.
Yandex (Russia)
Maybe, but very low weight. Yandex’s official documentation says meta keywords “can be used when determining the page’s relevance to search queries.” Most Russian SEO professionals believe it’s a low‑weight factor at best. If your audience is in Russia, it’s not harmful to fill them in—but don’t expect miracles.
Baidu (China)
Unclear but possibly ignored. A Baidu engineer once called meta keywords a “garbage heap of history.” However, a more recent Baidu page suggests they still consider title, description, and keywords. The consensus is that if they are used, the impact is minimal.
Naver (South Korea)
Not mentioned. Naver’s extensive SEO documentation makes zero mention of meta keywords, implying they either ignore them or treat them as a non‑factor.
Verdict: For the overwhelming majority of websites (especially those targeting global or English‑speaking audiences), meta keywords are not a ranking factor.
Three Smart Ways to Use Meta Keywords (When You Actually Need To)
Just because Google ignores them doesn’t mean the tag is entirely worthless. Here are three legitimate use cases where meta keywords can add value.
1. Internal Site Search
Some internal search platforms—like SOLR, Algolia, or Elasticsearch‑based systems—can be configured to pull keywords from the meta tag. If your site’s search experience relies on this tag, you’ll need to maintain it. This is rare, but worth checking if you have a custom search implementation.
2. An Internal Keyword Tagging System
This is the most common “hack” among advanced SEO teams. By filling the meta keywords tag with the primary target keyword for each page, you create a machine‑readable log of which pages target which terms.
Why that’s useful:
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Prevent keyword cannibalization – you can quickly see if two pages are targeting the same keyword.
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Avoid overlapping work – in enterprise teams, it helps different writers and SEOs coordinate.
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Find collaboration opportunities – if a page isn’t ranking well, you can see which team “owns” the keyword and work together to improve it.
To use this method, crawl your site with an SEO auditing tool (like Ahrefs Site Audit or any crawler that captures meta tags), then filter pages by the meta keywords field.
3. Spy on Competitors (Yes, Really)
About one‑third of websites still have meta keywords tags—including some of your competitors. By checking their homepage or key pages, you can uncover seed keywords they consider important.
For example, a toy store might have:
<meta name="keywords" content="toys, climbing accessories, climbing frames, games, inflatables, pre school, sandboxes, slides"/>
You can take those terms and plug them into a keyword research tool to discover hundreds of related ideas—complete with search volume and competition data.
A word of caution: Many competitors stuff their meta keywords with irrelevant or spammy terms. Check a few sites before you rely on any of them.
Should You Remove Meta Keywords?
If you’re not using meta keywords for any of the reasons above, there’s no harm in keeping them—but there’s also no benefit. Leaving them empty or filled with random terms doesn’t hurt your SEO.
However, there are two reasons you might want to remove them:
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Privacy – if you’re using them as an internal tagging system, competitors could spy on your keyword strategy the same way you spy on theirs.
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Cleanliness – removing unused tags makes your HTML slightly cleaner and reduces page weight (marginally).
If you decide to remove them, you can identify pages that still have meta keywords by running a site audit (using a tool like Ahrefs Webmaster Tools or any SEO crawler) and filtering for the tag.
For large sites, check if your CMS or theme injects the tag globally. If so, you can often remove it with one edit in your theme’s header.php file or by disabling the feature in your SEO plugin.
Final Thoughts
For 99% of marketers, the meta keywords tag is irrelevant. Google, Bing, and most other search engines ignore it. Spending time crafting the “perfect” keyword list for every page is a waste of resources.
But for the 1% who have internal search dependencies, complex team coordination needs, or a desire to peek at competitor strategy, meta keywords can serve a narrow, practical purpose.