Keyword use in meta tags

In the old days of SEO you could put your keywords in the keyword meta tag and you would quickly show up in the search engines. The SEO of today is a bit more complicated. Many times the search engines won't even look at the meta tags, but if they do and they don't find that keyword on your page as well then they devalue your website. To the search engines your keyword meta tag is misleading and looks like spam. This will leave you worse off than if you had just left the keyword out. So the best advice is to use keyword meta tags sparingly and strategically.