Hide keyword tag or not?

[AMurelli]

We have a mandatory keyword tag field in our cms page templates, which we have to keep
as our internal search facility bases queries on the keywords we use. Should we hide the keywords from the search
engines, as I read that Bing uses it as a spam signal? Or do we just need to stick to best practise ensuring the keywords match the keywords found in the body content? Many thanks for any help. Sophie

[GPainter]

Just to chime in Bing has also hinted that it sometimes uses the keywords as a negative factor in ranking signals which is another reason in my books to not use it. Tim makes some great points though so thumbs up all around!

[AMurelli]

Good point - strengthens my case to get rid of it. Thanks

[TimHolmes]

The only issue I can think of from an SEO perspective is more from the stand point of competitor spying/research. There was a time when you could simply look at a competitors site structure and determine all of their targeted keywords just from the meta tag, so in effect free keyword research.

This has changed somewhat and as soon as it was no longer determined to boost rank most simply dropped the tag.

Nowadays it is simply just not recommended to use them.

[AMurelli]

Hi Tim,

That is helpful, thank you. I think the devs are looking for a way to avoid this job unless it's completely necessary. If there isn't a big issue from an SEO perspective then the consensus is we can just leave the field there. I guess if you have a reputable site with no spam markers a few keyword tags on a page aren't going to be detrimental.

Thanks again for your help.

Sophie

[TimHolmes]

Hello Sophie,

I am not sure which CMS you use, but I personally have not used the keywords meta tag for some time now. Not due to it being a spam signal, but simply because it is no longer used as a ranking factor.

To alleviate your issue and not show your tag but still continue to use the CMS field, could your developers not look into the template files that are used and remove the location where a meta tag is dynamically added to your header. That way the CMS can still have the field for search queries but not be present in the pages code structure.

That way you get the best of both worlds, without causing you any issues. Hopefully I have understood how your site works and this is a possible solution.

Tim