Can Meta Tags such as the Keyword Tag improve my ranking in the Major Search Engines?

The simple answer is that the meta keyword tag has less impact than any of the other meta tags, which carry very little weight in the search engines anyway.

Isn't it true that everyone knows that in order to achieve a high ranking in the major search engines, all you need to do is put the keywords you wish to be found for in the meta keyword tag? Unfortunately not at all!

If it was that simple and everyone was doing it, then wouldn't everyone be ranking? It defies logic anyway; because you can only have a maximum of ten results in the Top 10 can't you? Or 20 results in a Top 20?

How many of you have obsessed over the Meta tags in the keyword description and still not achieved a result? Most people that have believed in meta tags would have put every relevant word into their keyword description that they wish to be found for and still found that they are nearly invisible if not invisible in the major search engines, have you done the same thing?

How many of you couldn't decide if you should put commas between the keywords, spaces, no commas, ALL CAPS or plurals?

Five or ten years ago, when search engines were in their infancy, meta keyword tags were a great little tool the search engines used to help them determine how to rank sites in their search results. When the engines' indexes were small, this meta tag was a quick, easy method to help decide which keywords might be important on a site.

However, as we all know times have changed, and the oh so important meta keywords tag is practically ignored by the major search engines, Google in particular. As always happens with anything this simple, people began to abuse it. Spammers in particular began to put keywords into the meta tag that had nothing to do with the content of their site. Because they knew lots of people were searching with the keyword "cars," for instance, they'd put that word in their meta tags a number of times to bring visitors to their site, even though their site had nothing to do with cars! Sites that post derogatory material were the number one perpetrators. As a result, the algorithms (criteria) that the search engines use has changed significantly to counteract such activity thus rendering the meta keywords tag useless.

Although the meta keywords tag lacks the impact it once had, it still shouldn't be ignored. When attempting to be found for a highly competitive keyphrase or search term it is important to leave no stone unturned. It is for this reason that it is vital to have all of the right strategies adopted throughout your online marketing strategy when trying to achieve a high ranking in the search engines.