Are Meta Keywords Still A Thing?

[otherside13]

Hey all! First post on here, forgive me for being an SEO newb.

Are meta keywords still a thing? Here's why I ask, I read this article from back in 2009 that said they are absolutely not a ranking factor anymore: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

However, in doing some research on our competition, I found that the top result for "Financial Advisor in Colorado Springs" was this company: http://www.strasbaughfinancial.com/

Honestly, the site seems to be doing everything opposite of what I read to do. It isn't even mobile responsive! With the Moz Bar, I found that no links pointing toward it. Not one video on the site (there is a link to a welcome video but the link is broken!!), no blog or regular content updates, no keywords in the H1 or H2 tags, page titles, etc. The website looks old and, frankly, terrible. Really I’m stumped how this can be ranking so high for so many competitive keywords.

Then I realized that they stuffed tons of keywords in the meta description and meta keywords. From what I can tell, this is the ONLY intentional SEO strategy they used. Am I missing something? Are meta keywords still a ranking factor and THAT important?

[SergioB1717]

This is not important, you can read this:

http://www.wordstream.com/meta-keyword

The domain age is one of the best factors

[otherside13]

Thanks so much!! This is very helpful.

[Roman-Delcarmen]

If you want to know the real reason of why that page is the position 1 look at the backlinks of that page ( anchor text/quality of the links/quantity of the links )

Check the audit

4700 backlinks / 26 Referring IP /  Domain Score 3

WmGFmmU

[Joe.Robison]

Meta keywords are not still a thing, at least in Google search!

So looking at Strasbaugh, and answering some comments you made:

• You're right, it's not mobile responsive - this can be a detriment, but it's not going to knock them off the first page in most cases just because of that. It's a small percentage of the overall factors
• Site design - I feel that I have pretty high standards, but I wouldn't call this "old and frankly, terrible" - I'd say it's decent for this industry. Keep in mind they're not trying to be a creative design agency website
• Domain age can be a helpful factor if it truly is old
• Unfortunately, the Moz bar isn't the best source to find a high volume of links (yet) - using Ahrefs I see 70 linking root domains, which is pretty decent for a local firm
• Video, H1, H2, blog/content updates - those can be signals but are not deal breakers if other factors exist
• Titles are important, but they're not totally bungling them. They at least have their core phrase "financial advisors" in there, although yes all the pages should have rewritten titles
• One thing that's likely helping is that its links have generally good anchor text. Mostly "Strasbaugh Financial Advisory" in the link anchor. This is something that I thought Google would have discounted more by now, but that's not the case, it's still a strong signal
• Lucky for you, if they're a competitor, is that in looking at their traffic on Ahrefs, they actually don't get a ton of it, it's only about 53 visits a month. The important thing to note is that your example keyword exactly as you phrase it "Financial Advisor in Colorado Springs" - gets 0 searches a month. The keyword "financial advisors colorado springs" gets 20 searches a month and they are ranked #4
• Looking a page like http://www.strasbaughfinancial.com/who-we-serve - they have decent helpful informaiton on there. It's not 10x or even 2x content by any means, but it's better than what I see on a lot of these local financial firm websites

Hopefully that helps! The good news is that if you think what they're doing is minimal, then you should be able to replicate and improve and then rank!