When it comes to search engine optimization, keywords play an essential role here. Using the right keywords help drive traffic to a website, but meta keywords aren't even seen by visitors to any one website, so what's the hue and cry about them? Mention meta tags and you will be guaranteed of fierce opinions. Initially used to provide a better, more accurate indexing of a page by search engines, i.e. a higher page ranking, this once useful feature is now largely ignored by most search engines, which usually have the final word on meta keywords, thanks to abuse by search engine spammers.

Like all monsters, the use of this type keywords began innocuously. Keywords inserted into the HTML of a website was read by search engines and associated with the text that actually appeared in the body of the website's actual copy. Naturally, greed crept in as search engine optimization pioneers quickly began using irrelevant terms or repeating relevant meta keywords excessively to attract higher page rankings. This trickery was clumsy at best and was soon ignored by most search engines.

While the issue is clear cut where many meta keyword opponents and search engines are concerned, what the final word on meta keywords should be can still be confusing for some site owners. Questions arise as to whether they should be used at all, what constitutes excessive use of keywords, which can lead to banning, and whether not using a meta tag at all will result in the page not showing up in search engine results.

As with many things in life, the easiest way to resolve any issue is to keep it short and simple. If you want to use the tag, it should be well-crafted, containing only keywords relevant to your content. The meta tag is only supposed to help drive traffic and rankings, with "help" being the definitive term. In fact, you can actually save on the stress, time and effort by not using one at all! Using a well crafted meta tag won't hurt, but it's the content and good title tags on a page that is your best bet for gaining the attention of web crawlers.