I’ve been reading a lot on SEOmoz and YOUmoz with the usual 2011 predictions, things you shouldn’t do, and every other list harps on about not using meta keywords.

Now...  this might be an unpopular post but I still use Meta Keywords... 

...before you give me the thumbs down or fall off your chair here me out first! I don't use them with the old beliefs of 'This will get me higher in the SERPs' - I'm not that stupid.

But I utilise the action & function of meta keywords for other purposes, something that is touched upon as use of meta keywords in this post already by Kate Morris; The Wonderful World of SEO Metatags;  

1. I use the keyterms listed within the meta keyword tag for on page/site search results similar to tagging a product, page or site with 'keywords'. This way we return relevant results in our site search results for miss-spellings and brand/product ID searches. I know you can have a separate field or function in your CMS to do this search tagging, but since 99% of the time the terms in that are the same as the ones I would use in meta keywords to tag a page why bother, just use the meta keywords part in your database for both.
    
2. I've noticed some directories and free indexes that have indexed/listed our site (for free, and without me submitting to them) have pulled meta keyword tags as the category and search tags for our listing on their site. Similarly I noticed that one of our competitor sites didn't have meta keywords and as a result are not as easily found on one of the major industry directories for our business. Therefore we show up to 1000s of visitors to the directory site and they don't - bonus for us.
    
3. I sometimes find meta keywords like a refresher. As I type them I think 'did I utilise my product text correctly for this topic/content/keyterms'. It means I have a 'second look' at the content (particularly good when another member of the team has written the text for me to publish). This gives me the chance to make sure it's not keyword stuffed or term heavy etc and similarly that it is focused on the right content and product terminology to give good informative piece of product or page content to visitors.

And frankly, who knows what the major search engines will use tomorrow to rank pages! I highly doubt it will be keywords - but only the SEO god knows. Some new to the market, local based and application based search engines (we’re not talking about the Google’s of the world) aren’t crawling the sites to get the content indexed appropriately but use tags such as meta keywords to help index the content – which was backed up when one of them phoned me to confirm the keywords and index for our listings in the search results and I realised she was telling me our homepage meta keywords!

Having meta keywords in doesn't hinder any SEO on your site (unless I missed that memo!), and if you're savvy you can knock them out per page/product easily and quickly as you should know the right keyterms for the content & product... so for 20seconds more work per product I think it at times can help in other aspects other than SEO.

Don't get me wrong - I think in no way meta keywords help with SEO/SERPs! But the action of 'meta keywords' on a page/product can be utilised for other functions and benefits. I contentious topic I realise, but I won’t be the only one who thinks the function of meta keywords can be used for other reasons other than natural SEO.