Meta Keywords: Are They Still Relevant for SEO?

In this article, you'll learn whether meta keywords still matter for SEO (spoiler: they don't), which meta tags actually influence your rankings today, and how to think about keyword signals in an era where AI search engines are reshaping how people find information online.

Meta keywords were once a foundational SEO tactic. Website owners would stuff a hidden HTML tag with their target terms, and search engines would use those keywords to understand what a page was about. That system was exploited almost immediately. By 2009, Google officially stopped considering meta keywords as a ranking factor.

But here's what most guides miss: while meta keywords are dead for traditional search, the question of how search engines understand your content has become more complex—not simpler. AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude don't crawl and index pages the way Google does. They synthesize answers from multiple sources, cite pages differently, and have their own preferences for content types.

Understanding where meta keywords fit (and don't fit) in this landscape will help you avoid wasting time on outdated tactics and focus on what actually moves the needle.

What You'll Learn

What meta keywords are and why they were once important
The specific reason Google and other search engines stopped using them
Five alternative meta tags that do influence your SEO today
How AI search engines discover and cite content differently
When meta keywords might still have a use case

What Are Meta Keywords?

Meta keywords are a type of HTML meta tag that sits in the <head> section of a webpage. They list relevant keywords in a comma-separated format, intended to signal the page's topic to search engines.

Here's what the syntax looks like:

Unlike the content visible on your page, meta keywords are hidden from users. You can only see them by viewing a page's source code (right-click > View Page Source in most browsers).

The concept was straightforward: search engines would read this tag and use those keywords to categorize your page. If someone searched for "keyword research," pages with that term in their meta keywords tag would theoretically rank higher.

Some websites still use meta keywords today. Amazon, for example, includes them in their source code:

[SCREENSHOT: Amazon product page source code showing meta keywords tag with product-related terms]

However, the presence of meta keywords on a major site doesn't mean they're effective. Amazon's SEO success comes from domain authority, content depth, user signals, and technical infrastructure—not from a hidden HTML tag that search engines have ignored for over 15 years.

Why Meta Keywords Became Obsolete

Meta keywords weren't abandoned because they stopped working. They were abandoned because they worked too well—and were too easy to game.

In the early 2000s, website owners realized they could stuff their meta keywords with any term they wanted to rank for, regardless of whether their content was actually relevant. A site selling diet pills could add "best restaurants near me" to their meta keywords and potentially show up in those results.

This practice, called keyword stuffing, made search results increasingly unreliable. Users would click on results that had nothing to do with their query. The meta keywords tag became a spam vector.

Google responded by developing more sophisticated ways to understand page content. Instead of trusting what a website claimed to be about, Google began analyzing the actual text on the page, the links pointing to it, user behavior signals, and hundreds of other factors.

In September 2009, Google made it official. Matt Cutts, then head of Google's webspam team, stated clearly: "Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web search ranking."

Other search engines followed. Bing deprioritized meta keywords (though they've indicated it may be used as a spam signal—more keywords can actually hurt you). Yahoo stopped using them. The meta keywords era was over.

Meta Keywords vs. Meta Descriptions: What's the Difference?

Meta keywords and meta descriptions are both meta tags, but they serve completely different purposes and have very different relevance today.

Meta keywords (obsolete): A hidden list of terms intended for search engine crawlers. Not visible to users. Ignored by all major search engines for ranking purposes.

Meta descriptions (still relevant): A short summary of the page that appears in search results below the title. Visible to users. Influences click-through rates but is not a direct ranking factor.

The key difference: meta descriptions are user-facing. They help searchers decide whether to click on your result. A compelling meta description can significantly improve your click-through rate, which indirectly benefits your SEO.

Meta keywords, by contrast, were always hidden from users. They existed solely for search engine crawlers—crawlers that no longer pay attention to them.

Are Meta Keywords Relevant for SEO Today?

No. Meta keywords have no positive impact on SEO rankings.

Google has been explicit about this since 2009. Here's what the major search engines say:

Google: "We don't use the keywords meta tag in our search ranking." No ambiguity.
Bing: Deprioritized. Some SEOs believe Bing may use meta keywords as a spam indicator—meaning excessive use could hurt you.
Yahoo: No longer uses meta keywords for ranking.
Baidu: Has similarly moved away from meta keywords.

Adding meta keywords to your pages won't help your rankings. In some edge cases, it might even hurt by signaling to Bing that your page is using outdated or spammy tactics.

The time you'd spend researching and adding meta keywords is better invested in tactics that actually work: optimizing title tags, improving content quality, building topical authority, and ensuring your pages are structured for both users and search engines.

5 Meta Tags That Actually Matter for SEO

While meta keywords are obsolete, other meta tags remain essential for SEO. These tags help search engines understand your content, improve how your pages appear in search results, and influence click-through rates.

1. Title Tags

Title tags are the clickable headlines in search results. They're one of the most important on-page SEO elements—a direct ranking factor that also heavily influences whether users click on your result.

Here's how a title tag appears in your HTML:

<title>How to Potty Train a Puppy: Complete Guide | PetMD</title>

Best practices for title tags:

Keep titles under 60 characters to prevent truncation in search results
Include your primary keyword near the beginning
Make titles descriptive and compelling—they're your first impression
Include your brand name at the end if space permits

[SCREENSHOT: Google search result showing a well-optimized title tag with the search query highlighted]

2. Header Tags (H1, H2, H3)

Header tags create a hierarchical structure for your content. They help search engines understand the relationships between sections and make your content easier for users to scan.

H1: The main page title. Use only one H1 per page, and include your primary keyword.
H2: Major section headings. Use these to break your content into logical sections.
H3 and below: Subsections within H2 sections. Use these for further organization.

Search engines use header tags to understand what your page covers and how different topics relate to each other. A clear header structure also helps AI systems parse your content when generating answers.

[SCREENSHOT: Example of a well-structured page with clear H1, H2, and H3 hierarchy visible in source code]

3. Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions don't directly impact rankings, but they significantly influence click-through rates. A compelling description can be the difference between a user clicking your result or your competitor's.

Best practices for meta descriptions:

Keep descriptions between 150-160 characters
Include your primary keyword naturally
Write a clear, compelling summary of what the page offers
Include a subtle call-to-action when appropriate

Note: Google sometimes rewrites meta descriptions if it thinks its own snippet better matches the user's query. Writing accurate, relevant descriptions reduces the likelihood of this happening.

4. Image Alt Text

Alt text serves two purposes: it makes images accessible to users with screen readers, and it helps search engines understand what an image depicts.

Best practices for alt text:

Describe the image accurately and specifically
Include relevant keywords where natural, but don't stuff
Keep alt text under 125 characters
Don't start with "Image of" or "Picture of"—screen readers already identify it as an image

Good alt text can help your images appear in Google Image search and provides another signal to search engines about your page's topic.

5. Structured Data (Schema Markup)

Structured data is code you add to your pages to help search engines understand specific details about your content. It can enable rich snippets—enhanced search results that display additional information like ratings, prices, or recipe details.

Common schema types include:

Product: Displays price, availability, and reviews
FAQ: Shows expandable questions and answers directly in search results
How-to: Displays step-by-step instructions
Article: Helps search engines understand news and blog content
Organization: Provides business details like logo, contact info, and social profiles

[SCREENSHOT: Google search result showing rich snippets with star ratings and price information enabled by structured data]

Structured data doesn't directly boost rankings, but rich snippets can significantly improve click-through rates by making your results more visually prominent and informative.

How AI Search Engines Discover and Cite Content

Traditional search engines crawl the web, index pages, and rank them based on hundreds of factors. AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude work differently—and understanding these differences matters for your content strategy.

AI search engines don't maintain their own index in the traditional sense. When you ask a question, they synthesize answers by pulling from various sources, often in real-time. The content they cite depends on factors that are distinct from traditional SEO ranking signals.

What we know from analyzing AI citations:

Our analysis of 83,670 AI citations across ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity revealed significant differences in how each engine behaves:

Wikipedia usage varies dramatically. ChatGPT cites Wikipedia for 12.1% of citations. Claude cites it for 0.1%. Perplexity doesn't cite it at all.
Content type preferences differ. Claude heavily favors blog content (43.8% of citations). ChatGPT and Perplexity prefer product pages and official documentation.
Third-party sources dominate. About 83% of AI citations come from external sources. Only 17% come directly from brand websites.

This means optimizing for AI visibility requires different tactics than traditional SEO. While meta keywords are irrelevant for both, the content types, citation sources, and authority signals that AI engines favor are distinct from what works in Google.

Monitoring Your AI Search Visibility

Unlike traditional search where you can track rankings in Google Search Console, AI search visibility requires different tools. You need to understand which prompts mention your brand, which sources get cited, and how different AI engines perceive your content.

[SCREENSHOT: Analyze AI Prompt Level Analytics dashboard showing visibility, sentiment, and position tracking for tracked prompts - use Prompt_Level_Analytics.png]

Tools like Analyze AI allow you to track specific prompts relevant to your industry and see where your brand appears (or doesn't) across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. This gives you visibility into a channel that traditional SEO tools can't measure.

[SCREENSHOT: Analyze AI Citation Analytics showing which URLs are being cited and by which AI engines - use Citation_Analytics.png]

You can also see which of your pages are being cited by AI engines and identify patterns. If certain content types consistently get cited, you can create more of that format. If competitors are getting cited for prompts where you're absent, you know where to focus.

Should You Remove Meta Keywords From Your Site?

For most websites, yes—removing meta keywords is a sensible cleanup task. They provide no SEO benefit and can create minor issues:

Competitor intelligence risk. Meta keywords are visible in your source code. Competitors can easily see which keywords you're targeting. While this information is also available through other means, there's no reason to make it easier.
Code clutter. Removing unnecessary tags keeps your HTML cleaner and marginally reduces page size.
Potential negative signal. Some SEOs believe Bing may use excessive meta keywords as a spam indicator. While not confirmed, there's no upside to keeping them.

If your site runs on a CMS like WordPress, you can typically disable meta keywords site-wide through your SEO plugin settings (Yoast, Rank Math, etc.). For custom-built sites, removing the tag from your templates is straightforward.

That said, removing meta keywords should be a low-priority task. It won't improve your rankings—it just eliminates something unnecessary.

When Meta Keywords Might Still Be Useful

Despite being irrelevant for SEO, meta keywords can serve legitimate internal purposes for some organizations.

Internal content tagging. Large enterprises with thousands of pages sometimes use meta keywords as an internal tagging system. The marketing team might use them to categorize content for internal search or content management purposes—separate from any SEO function.

Preventing keyword cannibalization. Some content teams use meta keywords to document which pages target which keywords. This isn't for search engines—it's a way to maintain clarity across large content operations and ensure different pages aren't competing for the same terms.

Legacy system requirements. Some older internal search systems or content management platforms may still read meta keywords for their own functionality. If you're using such a system, removing meta keywords could break internal features.

If you use meta keywords for any of these purposes, keep them. Just understand they have zero impact on how Google, Bing, or AI search engines rank your content.

What to Focus On Instead of Meta Keywords

If you've been spending time on meta keywords, redirect that effort toward tactics that actually influence your visibility in both traditional and AI search.

For traditional SEO:

Keyword research and targeting. Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Keyword Planner to identify keywords with search volume and reasonable competition. Place these keywords naturally in your title tags, headers, and content.

[SCREENSHOT: Ahrefs keyword explorer showing search volume, keyword difficulty, and related keywords for a target term]

Content quality and depth. Create content that thoroughly addresses the searcher's intent. Thin, superficial content rarely ranks well.
Technical SEO. Ensure your site is fast, mobile-friendly, secure (HTTPS), and properly crawlable.
Link building. Earn backlinks from relevant, authoritative sites in your industry.

For AI search visibility:

Prompt research. Identify the questions and prompts people are asking AI engines in your industry. Unlike traditional keyword research, prompt research focuses on conversational queries and comparison requests.

[SCREENSHOT: Analyze AI Prompt Suggestion feature showing suggested prompts to track based on your industry - use Prompt_Suggestion.png]

Competitor gap analysis. Find prompts where competitors appear but you don't. These represent opportunities to create or improve content.

[SCREENSHOT: Analyze AI Opportunities dashboard showing prompts where competitors are mentioned but your brand is not - use Opportunities.png]

Citation source optimization. Understand which sources AI engines cite for your target topics. If industry blogs or review sites consistently get cited, earning mentions on those sites matters.

[SCREENSHOT: Analyze AI Top Sources showing which domains are most frequently cited for tracked prompts - use Top_Sources.png]

AI traffic attribution. Track which AI engines send traffic to your site and which pages receive that traffic. This tells you what's actually working.

[SCREENSHOT: Analyze AI Traffic dashboard showing referral sessions from different AI engines - use AI_Referral_Traffic.png]

The combination of traditional SEO and AI search optimization creates a more resilient organic strategy. As AI engines grow in usage, brands that appear in both traditional search results and AI-generated answers will capture more of the market.

Key Takeaways

Meta keywords are obsolete. Google stopped using them in 2009. Other search engines have followed. They provide zero SEO benefit.
Five meta tags still matter: title tags, header tags, meta descriptions, image alt text, and structured data. Focus your on-page optimization efforts here.
Removing meta keywords is recommended but low priority. They create minor risks (competitor spying, potential spam signals) without any benefit.
Meta keywords may still serve internal purposes for content tagging or documentation. Keep them if they're useful internally; just don't expect SEO value.
AI search engines have different behaviors. ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity cite different sources and prefer different content types. Monitoring your visibility across these engines requires dedicated tools.
Traditional SEO and AI search optimization complement each other. The fundamentals—quality content, clear structure, topical authority—benefit both channels.

Meta Keywords: Are They Still Relevant for SEO?

Ernest Bogore

Ibrahim Litinine

Table of Contents

What You'll Learn

What Are Meta Keywords?

Why Meta Keywords Became Obsolete

Meta Keywords vs. Meta Descriptions: What's the Difference?

Are Meta Keywords Relevant for SEO Today?

5 Meta Tags That Actually Matter for SEO

1. Title Tags

2. Header Tags (H1, H2, H3)

3. Meta Descriptions

4. Image Alt Text

5. Structured Data (Schema Markup)

How AI Search Engines Discover and Cite Content

Monitoring Your AI Search Visibility

Should You Remove Meta Keywords From Your Site?

When Meta Keywords Might Still Be Useful

What to Focus On Instead of Meta Keywords

Key Takeaways

Tie AI visibility toqualified demand.

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