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Generate Meta Keywords Tag

While Google and Bing no longer use the meta keywords tag as a ranking signal for general web search, some specialised platforms, internal corporate search engines, legacy content management systems, and the Baidu search engine in China still read the keywords list and use it as part of their relevance determination.

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Comma-separated keyword list output

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Proper HTML meta tag format

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Guidance on when keywords tags are still relevant

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Drop the Meta Tags into any page — blog post, product docs, intranet, school portal — with a single line of HTML. Your visitors get the full tool, processed entirely in their browser. No backend, no uploads, no signup.

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Meta Keywords in 2024: History, Current Status, and Better Alternatives

The meta keywords tag was one of the earliest HTML meta elements designed specifically for search engine optimisation, widely adopted throughout the 1990s when search engine technology was still primitive and webmasters needed an explicit channel to communicate page topics to crawlers that could not yet interpret content semantically. Webmasters populated the tag with lists of relevant terms intended to inform search engines about what each page covered, and the major search engines of the era weighted it heavily in their ranking algorithms. By the late 1990s, systematic keyword stuffing had become rampant across the web, with operators packing hundreds of loosely related or completely irrelevant terms into the meta keywords field to inflate rankings for queries the page had no business serving. AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, Infoseek, and early Google all read the meta keywords tag during this period. The spam problem became so severe that Google officially announced in 2009 on their Webmaster Central Blog that they do not use the meta keywords tag as a web ranking signal, and Bing followed with a similar statement noting the tag is now used as a potential spam indicator rather than a positive ranking factor.

The current state in 2024 is unambiguous across most of the search landscape, despite occasional confusion in older tutorials and CMS documentation that has not been updated in years. Google ignores the meta keywords tag completely and has done so for more than a decade with no signs of reversing the policy. Bing has stated explicitly that it may treat a keyword-stuffed meta keywords field as a spam signal, meaning an overpopulated tag could theoretically harm Bing rankings slightly rather than helping them. DuckDuckGo, which sources most of its index from Bing, follows the same approach by default. The only notable exception in the major search ecosystem is Baidu, China's dominant search engine, which reportedly still applies a weak positive weight to meta keywords when the tag is concise and relevant rather than stuffed. For sites genuinely targeting Chinese audiences through Baidu, a tightly focused meta keywords tag with five to ten relevant terms is considered marginally beneficial. For everyone else targeting Google, Bing, or other Western search engines, the tag has no upside and minimal downside when used conservatively with a short relevant list.

The time previously invested in meta keywords work is dramatically better spent on the three high-ROI on-page elements that genuinely move organic performance. The title tag remains the single strongest on-page ranking signal Google uses for keyword relevance determination, and any improvement to title quality delivers measurable ranking impact within weeks of indexing. The meta description has the highest impact on click-through rate from the impressions you already earn through existing rankings, often delivering double-digit CTR lifts on rewrite. Structured data markup using schema.org vocabulary including FAQPage, HowTo, Product, and Article types generates rich results in search that can dramatically increase visual prominence on the SERP and drive higher CTR independent of ranking position. For teams whose content workflows still include a mandatory meta keywords step from a decade-old documentation template, redirect that time to title tag optimisation and Search Console CTR monitoring instead, since the return on investment is orders of magnitude higher.

Beyond the search engine question, there remain a handful of legitimate niche uses for the meta keywords tag in 2024 that justify the existence of generators like this one. Some legacy enterprise CMS platforms including TYPO3, Joomla, and older versions of SharePoint expose a meta keywords field that feeds into their own internal site search rather than relying on external search engine indexing. Some specialised vertical search engines in legal, medical, or academic publishing still read the tag as one input among many. Some content syndication networks pass the keywords field through to partner sites that may index on it. Some corporate intranet search platforms built before 2010 still use meta keywords as a primary relevance signal. For any of these contexts, generating a proper meta keywords tag remains useful, but the resulting tag should always be short, relevant, and free of repetition rather than stuffed with tangentially related terms.

Google's Official Statement on Meta Keywords (2009)Bing Webmaster Blog: Meta Keywords

How to use this tool

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Enter the topic keywords for your page to generate a properly formatted meta keywords tag.

How It Works

Step-by-step guide to generate meta keywords tag:

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List your page's core topics
Identify five to ten keywords that accurately describe the specific content of the individual page rather than your entire website, focusing on the actual queries users would type to find this page rather than aspirational terms you wish you ranked for. The list should be narrowly focused on this page's topic, including primary keywords plus a few close variations, not a broad sweep of every topic your site covers. Resist the temptation to pad the list with tangentially related terms since modern systems penalise rather than reward keyword breadth in this tag.
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Generate the tag
Enter your selected keywords into the generator separated by commas to produce a properly formatted meta name equals keywords content equals HTML tag in the exact syntax that modern parsers expect. The generator handles the comma spacing, quoting, and HTML escaping automatically so you do not have to remember the precise formatting rules. The output is a single HTML line ready to paste into your page head section without further editing or validation.
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Review for relevance
Review the generated tag before deploying and remove any keywords that are only loosely related to the specific content of this page rather than directly describing it, since keyword relevance matters substantially more than raw quantity for every system that still reads this tag. A tightly focused six-term list outperforms a sprawling fifteen-term list across Baidu, internal corporate search platforms, and every other indexer that still applies any weight to the field. Quality beats quantity here without exception.
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Add to your page head
Paste the generated meta keywords tag into your page head section alongside your title tag and meta description, ideally grouped with the other content-descriptive meta tags rather than scattered through the head. Verify deployment by viewing the page source after publishing to confirm the tag is actually present on the rendered HTML rather than being silently stripped by a caching plugin or CMS sanitiser. If you are deploying through a CMS that exposes a dedicated keywords field, paste the comma-separated list into that field rather than the full HTML tag.

Real-world examples

Common situations where this approach makes a real difference:

Internal site search optimisation

A company intranet running on a legacy SharePoint deployment uses an older indexing engine that still reads meta keywords as a primary relevance signal for internal knowledge base search, meaning staff cannot find articles efficiently without the tag populated. The content team uses the generator to produce concise five to seven term keyword tags for each of the four hundred most-searched articles, prioritising the queries staff actually type into the search box. Within weeks the intranet search becomes substantially more useful for the workforce, reducing duplicate question volume in help channels and saving real time across the organisation.

Baidu SEO

A developer optimising a Western e-commerce site for expansion into the Chinese market through Baidu includes meta keywords tags on every product page because Baidu still applies a weak positive weight to the tag when the contents are relevant and free of stuffing. The keywords list for each product mirrors the Chinese-language search queries the brand wants to rank for, transliterated and localised by a native Chinese speaker rather than machine-translated. The metadata work runs alongside server localisation in China to satisfy Baidu's preference for locally hosted content, and the combination produces visibility in Baidu within months rather than years.

Legacy CMS migration

A developer migrating a fifteen-year-old Joomla site to a modern headless CMS preserves the existing meta keyword tags during the migration to avoid any unintended changes to the platform's built-in internal search functionality, which several internal teams still rely on for content discovery despite the public search index moving to Google entirely. The migration script extracts the existing keyword values from the Joomla database and writes them into the new CMS's metadata fields, then the generator is used to fill in keyword tags for any newly created pages going forward so the internal search experience remains consistent across old and new content.

When to use this guide

Use this when a specific CMS, platform, or internal search system requires a meta keywords tag, or when building sites that need to support non-Google search engines.

Pro tips

Get better results with these expert suggestions:

Do not add meta keywords for Google or Bing

Google officially ignores the meta keywords tag entirely and has done so since the 2009 confirmation on the Webmaster Central Blog, with no signs of that policy ever reversing. Bing has been explicit that it treats heavily stuffed meta keywords as a potential spam signal that may suppress rather than boost rankings. For any site targeting these search engines as the primary acquisition channel, adding meta keywords provides zero positive benefit and may carry mild negative risk. Invest the equivalent time in writing unique title tags and meta descriptions instead, since those deliver real measurable performance improvements.

Use meta keywords only for Baidu or legacy CMSs

The only two contexts that genuinely justify meta keywords work today are sites targeting Baidu which still applies a weak positive weight to the tag when used correctly, and legacy CMS platforms or internal corporate search systems that explicitly rely on the meta keywords field for their own indexing logic rather than depending on external search engines. Outside these two specific contexts the tag is a maintenance overhead with no upside, so default to omitting it unless you have documented evidence that a specific system on your stack will use it productively.

Keep any keyword lists short and relevant

If you are generating meta keywords for a platform that genuinely uses them, limit each tag to five to ten highly relevant terms specific to the individual page rather than a broad list covering the entire website or product category. Long lists stuffed with tangentially related terms or competitor brand names are a legacy spam tactic that modern indexing systems including Baidu and most enterprise search platforms now flag negatively. Concise relevance beats breadth in every scoring model that still considers the tag at all.

Remove existing meta keywords from Bing-focused pages

If your existing pages carry lengthy meta keywords tags with twenty or more terms accumulated from years of well-meaning but outdated SEO advice, and you care about your Bing organic performance, consider removing or significantly shortening them as part of your next metadata audit. Bing has been explicit that keyword stuffing in this tag can be used as a spam signal that suppresses ranking position. Cleaning the tags up takes minutes per page and eliminates any theoretical risk while costing nothing in real ranking value since Google ignores the tag anyway.

Keep the list short and relevant

If you are generating meta keywords for a platform that uses them, stick to 5–10 highly relevant terms. Long keyword stuffed lists are a legacy spam tactic that many systems now flag negatively.

Do not use meta keywords to target Google or Bing

Google officially ignores meta keywords. Bing has stated it uses the tag only as a spam indicator. Investing time in title tags and meta descriptions delivers far more SEO value.

Check your CMS documentation

Some CMSs like TYPO3, Joomla, or legacy e-commerce platforms still expose meta keywords as a field. If your system uses it for internal search, generating the tag is worthwhile.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

No, definitively. Google officially announced on the Webmaster Central Blog in September 2009 that it does not use the meta keywords tag as a ranking factor for web search results, and this policy has remained unchanged through every algorithm update and core ranking system overhaul since. Multiple Google representatives including John Mueller and Gary Illyes have reconfirmed the policy in conference talks and Twitter exchanges over the subsequent fifteen years. Including the meta keywords tag has absolutely no positive impact on Google search rankings, and excluding it has no negative impact either, so the decision to include or omit the tag should be driven entirely by whether other systems on your stack actually use it for indexing or internal search functionality.

For most websites targeting Google, Bing, or other major Western search engines as their primary acquisition channel, meta keywords are not worth the time investment required to populate them properly across every page. The only meaningful exceptions are sites running on legacy CMS systems with internal search functionality that explicitly reads the meta keywords field, sites specifically optimising for Baidu in the Chinese market where the tag still carries weak positive weight, sites distributing content through specialised vertical search engines in legal or academic publishing that read the tag, and sites integrating with corporate intranet search platforms built before 2010. For everyone else, the investment returns zero SEO value and the time is better spent on title and description optimisation.

For Google the tag is simply ignored entirely, producing no positive or negative impact on rankings regardless of how the tag is populated or whether it exists at all. For Bing the official documentation states that heavily keyword-stuffed meta keywords may be treated as a spam indicator, meaning an aggressively stuffed tag with dozens of irrelevant terms could theoretically suppress Bing rankings slightly compared with not having the tag at all. Conservative use with five to ten genuinely relevant terms is unlikely to harm rankings on any platform that reads the tag, while stuffed lists with fifty or more loosely related terms represent a theoretical Bing risk worth eliminating in any cleanup audit. The safest approach is to omit the tag entirely for Western search engine optimisation.

The meta keywords tag's original intended purpose of communicating page topics to search engines is now served far more effectively by a combination of the title tag, the H1 heading, the body content, and structured data markup. The title tag is the single strongest on-page ranking signal Google uses and deserves the time previously spent on keywords work. The H1 reinforces the title topic for both users and crawlers. Body content provides the deep relevance signals modern algorithms actually use to determine topical authority. Structured data using schema.org vocabulary including Article, Product, FAQPage, and HowTo provides machine-readable content attribution that unlocks rich result features in search. Focus on those four elements for meaningful SEO impact.

Baidu, China's dominant search engine, reportedly still applies a weak positive weight to meta keywords when the tag contents are relevant and free of stuffing, making it the only major search engine where populating the tag still serves a clear ranking purpose. Most other major search engines including Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Yandex, and Brave Search either officially ignore the tag entirely or treat stuffed versions as spam signals. If your site targets Chinese search traffic through Baidu as a meaningful acquisition channel, a concise five to ten term meta keywords tag mirrored to your Chinese-language target queries is worth including. For everyone else the answer is to skip the tag and invest the time elsewhere.

The standard format is meta name equals keywords content equals followed by your comma-separated keyword list enclosed in quotation marks, placed inside the head section of your HTML document. Keywords within the content attribute are comma-separated with optional spaces after each comma, with no individual quotation marks around the individual keywords themselves. The content attribute should list five to ten relevant terms specific to the page rather than the entire website, and should avoid repeating the same keyword multiple times in different orders or pluralisations since modern parsers detect and discount that pattern as legacy spam.

Many CMS platforms, especially older systems like TYPO3, Joomla, Drupal versions predating the latest, and certain e-commerce platforms including older Magento installs, built meta keywords support into their content models years before Google deprecated the tag and have retained the field for backward compatibility with sites that still rely on it. The field persists in administrative interfaces even though most external search engines ignore the tag in their indexing. Some of these platforms also use the same meta keywords field for their own internal site search functionality, which is why it still appears prominently in editorial workflows even when the public-facing SEO value has long since disappeared.

Five to ten genuinely relevant terms specific to the individual page is the optimal range across every system that still reads the tag, including Baidu and most legacy CMS internal search platforms. Below five terms the tag fails to provide meaningful topical coverage of the page content, while above ten terms the list typically dilutes relevance with tangentially related terms that hurt rather than help in modern scoring models. Avoid duplicating the same keyword in multiple pluralisations or word orders since modern parsers detect this pattern and may penalise it as a stuffing tactic carried over from the legacy spam era of the 1990s and early 2000s.

No, omitting the meta keywords tag is now considered standard professional practice for any site targeting Google or Bing as a primary acquisition channel, and any SEO consultant or developer who insists on populating it for general search engine optimisation in 2024 is working from outdated documentation. Audit reports, Lighthouse scores, and PageSpeed Insights do not flag the absence of the tag as an issue. Modern SEO tools including Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz do not include meta keywords coverage in their default site audit dashboards. The absence of the tag is a positive signal of current best-practice awareness rather than a gap in implementation.