After a long time of discussion online and offline, finally Google came to the rescue and confirmed that Google does not use Keywords meta tag in web ranking.
Source: Webmasters Tool
What does this mean ?
Now you can stop worrying about the keywords that you insert in the meta tag. Stop worrying doesn’t actually mean, to stop using meta tags! To be in the safer side(as we don’t know how other search engines treat meta keywords), it doesn’t hurt at all to use proper meta keywords.
And Matt cuts has clearly indicated in the above video that meta description is still valid and Google considers it while showing the snippet of description, if its nicely/meaningfully done.
Avoid the Confusion
Do not confuse this with “using the proper keywords” in the article. Using keywords in the article will get you up in the search ranking(if done properly) — If not UP, your article will be shown for the keywords, that you are using in the article. But as always, play safe. Don’t try to inject irrelevant keywords into your article. This will do more harm then any help, in the future.
Do not believe in people who call you and tell that – they will get your website in the first place of Google search ranking. Many of these guys still think that Google use the keyword tags to assign ranking and that they can trick!
Whats your stand on meta keywords, meta description or meta tags in general ?