Can you expound why i have to avoid using meta keywords?

[jsevilla]

I'm using the on page report card and it tells me that i have to avoid using meta keywords.I'm a little bit confused. I thought that it's important to use it all the time so search engine can better index the site. if I use SEO Quake it will tell me in the diagnostic test that I need to input keywords.

[PatrickGriffith]

Search engines stopped using the keywords tag a long time ago, presumably because it was being abused by just about every single webmaster in the world.

So, if you still use it, you're getting zero SEO benefit plus you're saying to your competitors "Hey guys, here are the keywords that I'm trying to rank for.  I just thought I'd let you know in case you want to compete with me for those ranking spots."  Not a good idea.

[goodlegaladvice]

Search Engines do not use meta-keywords for ranking.................

I would never use all the keywords you are targeting in that meta it makes less work for you competition to outrank you

[Copstead]

Google doesn't support meta keywords.  Bing looks at meta keywords as a spam signal and not a ranking signal.

So there really isn't any reason to use them.

Read the full article about Bing and Meta Keywords here: http://searchengineland.com/the-meta-keywords-tag-lives-at-bing-why-only-spammers-should-use-it-96874

[symbolphoto]

I don't buy the - "it gives competitors what you are trying to rank for"  arguement. Hell, all you have to do is go to a page title or look around a bit on some text and it should be glaringly obviously what they are trying to rank for.

.02

[PatrickGriffith]

It's unlikely that your keywords will give away some huge secret, but at the very least it will make the job a tad easier on your competitors.  And because the tag has zero benefit, why would you want to even give a small advantage to your competitors?

[tcolling]

"Bing looks at meta keywords as a spam signal and not a ranking signal."

That's something I hand't heard before.  Great.

I haven't been inserting keywords for a long time, after hearing that they were no help for SEO.  However, in the beginning we were using them on some pages.  We have several hundred pages on our WordPress site.  I guess I will have to go look for a plugin to remove them.  Can anyone recommend one for that purpose?  We're built on Thesis (I'm sorry to say, now) which doesn't play well with a lot of the mainstream SEO plugins like the one from Yoast.

Thanks,

• Tim