Blog SEO Tips: Are keywords that important?
A few days ago I received a comment on one of Blogsessive’s older posts on SEO & keywords. That comment got me a little worried about the fact that due to people spreading incomplete information, or just putting out statements like “Google doesn’t care about keywords”, some of you might think that having a keyword strategy is pointless. This is what reader David Housman asked:
I thought that search engines had stopped factoring keywords into relevancy?
The source of this belief is probably a post published on the Google Webmaster Central Blog back in September 2009 in which Matt Cutts refers strictly to Google not making use of the keywords META tag in order to calculate a search result’s relevancy to the search query.
In other words, you could type 300 keywords of your liking there. Google will just skip them entirely and rather decide if the result is relevant only based on the content itself. This doesn’t mean that the Google bot will ignore your keywords. It means that it will consider only those keywords present on page, in the content. That’s why it is extremely important to write your blog post from both the perspective of a human reader and a search engine bot.
I’m not going to get any deeper into the topic of writing SEO friendly content. Just remember that it’s a must if you want to rank high for certain keywords and phrases. For more information please read some of the articles I have published here in the past:
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I still insert meta tags and tags themselves into my blog posts. Just because Google doesn’t use them, doesn’t mean other search engines follow. I also use Thesis that seems to improve how my site is indexed, which is a major selling point of it and I’m happy.
You’re spot on with this one Jonny. Just as Matt Cutts said, if Google doesn’t consider them, it doesn’t mean that no search engine does. Further more, I have my own belief. I might just be a personal thing, but I think that if you provide a good match between your keywords meta and the keywords used in your content you have a better shot at gaining trust. This is not proven anywhere, it’s again just something I believe. I’d rather take my shot and spend a few more minutes on the post than not do it and waste a possibility.
I use keywords and I still use Meta tags on every post. I think the time it takes to include them it silly not to, it wont hurt your post, and until we all know 100% meta tags and keywords don’t matter, I will would continue to add them.
Me too, I still use meta tags. Doesn’t hurt if you do and we don’t really know Google might eventually change their mind at least you’re prepared for that, just in case. And I’ve read somewhere that Meta tags still has its advantages.
John, Andrew, I’m 100% with you on that. With Google it has always been like that. We rely on bits of information spread by those most knowledgeable and Matt Cutts, and this information is most time nothing more than a simple hint.
And also, Google is not the only search engine. Would you risk losing traffic for sake of gaining 5 minute by not editing your post’s metas?
Great Post! If you follow Matt Cutts tips & Ideas you can perform miracles easily.
Hey Alex,
Excellent article. Love this post which make me clear with the importance of keywords. It was a good stuff which is more helpful to us & it sounds great. Thx again for sharing these Blog SEO tips. Keep on sharing good stuffs like this.
i think keyword is still the king for your online content to drive much more visitor. Not just only PR or backlinks.
thx