Google Wants You To Use Keyword Metatags... No, Really

SEOs are going to have to start including keyword meta tags in their service proposals again, at least when their clients are Google News-accredited. For the rest of you, get ready to explain why keyword meta tags still don’t matter to the vast majority.

Google just announced a brand new keyword tag on the Google News blog. The news_keywords meta tag is designed to “empower news writers to express their stories freely while helping Google News to properly understand and classify that content so that it’s discoverable by our wide audience of users,” according to Rudy Galfi, Google News Product Manager.

The idea of using keywords to help Google better sort the news isn’t entirely new; publishers have been able to use the ”keywords” tag in the News XML sitemap at each new article upload for some time. This new tag in the HTML of each article is a logical extension of that sorting feature, with the added functionality that the words aren’t required in headlines or body copy.