Today Google made an interesting announcement to the web community. Actually it was a confirmation to what many had thought. Google pays no attention to the keywords in your source code. As Search Engine Land points out, there should be no surprise, as the idea of Meta keywords does not enter into the discussion on Google’s webmaster  page about meta tags. The real question, though is should you now ignore keywords in your Meta Tags too? We think it does not hurt to add keywords. It is still used by Yahoo!, Ask and Bing. Of course, with the majority of searches at Google, it is not something you need to worry about as much as the quality of your content. I think this document from Bing’s Webmaster toolbox sums it up best:

The <meta> tag’s keyword attribute is not the page rank panacea it once was back in the prehistoric days of Internet search. It was abused far too much and lost most of its cachet. But there’s no need to ignore the tag. Take advantage of all legitimate opportunities to score keyword credit, even when the payoff is relatively low. Fill in this tag’s text with relevant keywords and phrases that describe that page’s content.

When creating keyword text, remember the following:

• Choose words that may be secondary keyword terms (save the primary keywords for use in the <title> and <meta> description tags), and even include a few, commonly seen typographical errors of primary keywords, just for good measure
• Limit your keyword and key phrase text, separated by commas, to no more than 874 characters
• Don’t repeat a keyword more than 4 times among the keywords and phrases in the list

So what does it all mean? Focus on good content, write title tags related to the content on the pages and craft well written description tags that are also related to what is actually on the page. If you are still not sure, we highly recommend you read Google’s or Bing’s documentation on the subject.

*****Update****

In a yawn move, at SMX East, Yahoo! has also announced they do not use the Keyword Tag. Does it really matter now that Bing will control their search results soon?