Can you target keywords not in your meta tags?

Curious, as I never had done this before so was not sure this actually works or not. Basically, what I wanted to know is say I want to target "Dog Training" keyword. However, this keywords is not in on my site at all. Not even in the meta tags. I have read that meta tags do not play any role in search ranking anymore, or if it does it has very little impact.

Yes, you can, the examples are doorways on profile pages. These meta things are nothing now.

hits79 said:

this keywords is not in on my site at all.

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Don't get what do you mean. If the keyword isn't on the page (e.g. in the title, H1 and the texts), you'll most likely not be able to rank that page for this keyword.

If anything you don't want to stuff your target keywords in your meta tags, because they are hidden keywords.

toptoptop said:

Yes, you can, the examples are doorways on profile pages. These meta things are nothing now.Don't get what do you mean. If the keyword isn't on the page (e.g. in the title, H1 and the texts), you'll most likely not be able to rank that page for this keyword.

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What i meant, is by not having the keyword say "dog training" on any articles, categories, post, or meta tags.

Troshi said:

If anything you don't want to stuff your target keywords in your meta tags, because they are hidden keywords.

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So, it's not good to target those keywords at all then?

From all of the sites I have done, I would personally say not to stuff that many keywords in your meta tags... Only the base keywords of what you are trying to target.

With so many plugins out there for putting tags in your posts and such, this is where you ultimately want to put your target keywords.

Also, you want to put the keyword you are targeting in your post Title, h1-h3(4 or 5) tags, as well as have a good diversity of the target keyword in the body of your post. There should be a lot of threads and/or posts about this around here. A lot of them have been very beneficial to me!

Hope that helps you out

There is no use of meta tags nowadays. Means - if you target for the KW "dog training" if its not found on your meta tag its ok. But it should be on your H1 or H2 or title or content.

hits79 said:

What i meant, is by not having the keyword say "dog training" on any articles, categories, post, or meta tags.

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If you don't have "dog training" KW found any ware on your site, but have blacklinks bearing that KW will have no use.

thanks guys, i understand now