Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I remove Meta Keywords tags?
-
Hi,
Do you recommend removing Meta Keywords or is there "nothing to lose" with having them?
Thanks
-
So basically you got the answer as it dosen't harm or help as far as rankings BUT there is a way to use it either in your advantage or disadvantage.
It can also give away your main keywords to competitors - and that's not good.
For high competitive websites (where competitors are following movements and trying to figure things out ) I am using the keywords metatags to channel competitors in a different directions by putting there other keywords (still somehow related) and not the keywords that particular page is targeting.
Case study:
I have an account and soon after placing some "stupid" keywords in the keyword tag we've notice on page changes in a major competitor for those keywords that are not really good (conversion, volume etc) but probably on the idea that if the #1 is doing it it must be important
-
Hi,
Personally I don't use them and have not seen any negative or positive effects of doing so.
The main reason I don't is, considering Google doesn't use them as a ranking influencer, then I just don't waste time filling them in. I don't think the time it can take warrant's the reward from any search engine that still looks at them. Plus, I don't like the fact a lazy competitor might take a look to see what my main focus is.
Your time would be better invested focusing elsewhere.
If the keywords tab is already on the site, then how many pages would you need to remove it from? How long would it take? And given the only real reason to remove would be to stop competitors seeing them - info which they can easily find anyway, is it worth the effort? I'd be inclined to say not.
So, in short - if they are NOT present don't bother adding. If they ARE present, don't waste time removing.
Hope this helps.
-
I wouldn't use meta keywords either, as there is no real value in them in terms of ranking - Bing actually uses them to help identify spammers. As Moosa mentioned; if you put too much effort into them it is a quick and easy way for competitors to identify what keywords you are targeting.
I think this recent Q&A would be of interest to you -
http://www.seomoz.org/q/meta-keywords-should-we-use-them-or-not
-
No harm in using meta keyword tag from Google's point of view. There are other search engines apart from Google who still consider meta tag signal in ranking. **Google is not only the traffic source. **
-
To be honest, I f i would be at your place I wouldn’t have used that and if it was available I would have delete it till now for few specific reasons...
- This has no impact from the SEO point of view and search engine is not getting or collecting any information from this...so why write more?
- If the Meta Keyword tag is smartly inserted then it can be dangerous and this is because you are seriously helping your competitors to see what keywords are you targeting on the page and then he can alter his strategies accordingly to outrank you in search engine from the desired key phrases.
Hope this helps!
-
Meta keywords doesn't harm your website in any which ways, though it doesn't even help you in gaining rankings in Search Engines,
Matt Cutts says "It's possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it's unlikely. Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently we see no need to change that policy."
However, there are other search engines and directories that use the keyword meta tag. For example, Yahoo! still uses it
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I disable the indexing of tags in Wordpress?
Hi, I have a client that is publishing 7 or 8 news articles and posts each month. I am optimising selected posts and I have found that they have been adding a lot of tags (almost like using hashtags) . There are currently 29 posts but already 55 tags, each of which has its own archive page, and all of which are added to the site map to be indexed (https://sykeshome.europe.sykes.com/sitemap_index.xml). I came across an article (https://crunchify.com/better-dont-use-wordpress-tags/) that suggested that tags add no value to SEO ranking, and as a consequence Wordpress tags should not be indexed or included in the sitemap. I haven't been able to find much more reliable information on this topic, so my question is - should I get rid of the tags from this website and make the focus pages, posts and categories (redirecting existing tag pages back to the site home page)? It is a relatively new websites and I am conscious of the fact that category and tag archive pages already substantially outnumber actual content pages (posts and news) - I guess this isn't optimal. I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks wMfojBf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCN-SBWD0 -
Replacing keywords by synonyms. Will it increase risk of google keyword stuffing penalization?
I have a page which is ranking already pretty well for a relative competitive keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Google also ranks us on first page for synonym of keyword we optimize the page for (even though synonym does not appear on our page). I am now considering to replace some occurences of the keyword in the page by different synonyms, in the hope that our ranking may further improve for these synonyms.
However I am concerned that google may penalize me for keyword stuffing if I am using a wide range of synonyms of one keyword on our page. My plan is only to replace some occurences of keyword with synonyms. I am a bit nerveous here since page is already ranking quite well in a competitive niche. Any thoughts?0 -
Should I use **tags or h1/h2 tags for article titles on my homepage**
I recently had an seo consultant recommend using tags instead of h1/h2 tags for article titles on the homepage of my news website and category landing pages. I've only seen this done a handful of times on news/editorial websites. For example: http://www.muscleandfitness.com/ Can anyone weigh in on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blankslatedumbo0 -
Is it okay to copy and paste on page content into the meta description tag?
I have heard conflicting answers to this. I always figured that it was okay to selectively copy and paste on page content into the meta description tag.....especially if the onpage content is well written. How can it be duplicate content if it's pulling from the exact same page? Does anybody have any feedback from a credible source about this? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanguardCommunications1 -
Meta NoIndex tag and Robots Disallow
Hi all, I hope you can spend some time to answer my first of a few questions 🙂 We are running a Magento site - layered/faceted navigation nightmare has created thousands of duplicate URLS! Anyway, during my process to tackle the issue, I disallowed in Robots.txt anything in the querystring that was not a p (allowed this for pagination). After checking some pages in Google, I did a site:www.mydomain.com/specificpage.html and a few duplicates came up along with the original with
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
"There is no information about this page because it is blocked by robots.txt" So I had added in Meta Noindex, follow on all these duplicates also but I guess it wasnt being read because of Robots.txt. So coming to my question. Did robots.txt block access to these pages? If so, were these already in the index and after disallowing it with robots, Googlebot could not read Meta No index? Does Meta Noindex Follow on pages actually help Googlebot decide to remove these pages from index? I thought Robots would stop and prevent indexation? But I've read this:
"Noindex is a funny thing, it actually doesn’t mean “You can’t index this”, it means “You can’t show this in search results”. Robots.txt disallow means “You can’t index this” but it doesn’t mean “You can’t show it in the search results”. I'm a bit confused about how to use these in both preventing duplicate content in the first place and then helping to address dupe content once it's already in the index. Thanks! B0 -
Google places keyword variations
Hi all, I have a site that is ranking #1 in Google Places for its main <city><keyword>search... but it does not rank for any of its basic keyword variations, which I find very confusing.</keyword></city> ie (just an example) Chicago Caterer (ranked #1 in google places)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | x2264983x
Chicago Caterers (not ranked in google places)
Chicago Catering (not ranked in google places)
Chicago Catering Company (not ranked in google places)
Chicago Catering Companies (etc..) How can I secure a google places ranking for these simple keyword variations? Do I build links to the google plus page using that anchor text? Do I get citations that contain that keyword somewhere on the page? Do I optimize for these keyword variations on the actual website itself? (not the places listing). Obviously I don't stuff these keywords into the google places listing. Any help would be much appreciated!0 -
Should I remove the ?replytocom variables in wordpress?
I'm using Yoast's wordpress plugin and there is an option to remove the replytocom variables. I'm curious what everyone's thoughts were on that, and if I should do it. Here's the site if you need to see it. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoahsDad0 -
Removed Site-wide links
Hi there, I have recently removed quite a lot of site-wide links leaving the only link on homepage's of some websites, since doing this I have seen a dramatic drop on my keywords, going from position 2-3 to nowhere. Has anyone else experienced anything like this, should I expect to see a return on these keywords? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780