Is Meta Keywords Important For Websites?
-
Hi,
I understand that meta title and descriptions are very important for websites.
I would like to know if meta keywords are important?
I have seen people talking about meta keywords are useless and it should be removed from the website to prevent competitors from knowing your keywords.
Anyone has anything to share?
-
Thank you for your feedback John!
-
Google doesn't use them at all. Bing uses them, but mostly as a spam signal (see here). I wouldn't bother with them.
-
Got it thank you!
-
Thanks for the tips.
-
Hi
For the official line on meta keywords form Google, I've attached this link:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html
Google officially announced in 2009 that meta keywords was not a factor in ranking at all. I also believe that the description isn;t a ranking factor - the reason you need to focus on the description is to ensure that it has a strong hook that accurately reflects the content of the page to entice the searcher to click on the link.
-
Hello,
Sure, meta keywords are not important for google bot, but for other search engines it does. Yahoo, bing and other smaller search robots do care about these keywords. They help them associate the indexed content to the right keywords, at least in the starting phase. So, if you want to get rankings only in google and not in other search engine, remove the meta keywords.
-
Thank you. I have removed the meta keywords on my website.
I guess Google doesnt give alot of weight to meta keywords. -
Definitely not important. I still add them in because I think it helps our content writers structure the page and some minor search engines use them. I know some people think they can actually cause harm and don't use them at all. Whatever you do, make sure not to spend too much time on them and not to keyword stuff.
The only time they have any relevance is if you are using them for Google news.
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
-
What is the best strategy for dissolving an innocently created link network with over 100 websites?
Hello Moz Community, Over many years 120 websites were created all under a couple different organizations around the globe. The sites are interconnected via anchor text and domain name links and some redirect to larger sites. The teachings have a central theme and many tools, training programs, events, locations and services are offered on many different websites. Attached is a slice of a Majestic Link Graph showing the network. God bless Majestic for this new tool! We are looking for solutions that are efficient and effective in regards to usability, rankings and being achievable. Thank you so much for your help! Donna EJhNPqT
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Awakening-Mind0 -
Does Google want contact numbers in the meta description?!
Reading up it seems like there's complete free reign to enter what you want in the meta description and they are not considered a direct ranking signal However I have added contact numbers to the meta descriptions for around 20 reasonably high ranking pages for my company and it seems to have had a negative effect (taken screen grabs and previous rankings) More strangely when you 'inspect' the page the meta description features the desired number yet when you find the page in the serps the meta description just does not feature the number (page has been cached and the description does not carry on) I'm wondering whether such direct changes are seen as spam and therefore negative to the page?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jacksons_Fencing1 -
How Can I Safely Establish Homepage Relevancy With Internal Keyword Links?
My website has roughly 1000-2000 pages. However, our homepage is lacking relevancy as to what it is about. One way that I'd like to tackle this problem, is by updating many of our pages with internal linking. I often hear, use exact keyword links with caution, but have assumed this mainly referred to external backlinks. Would it be a disaster to set up our single most relevant keyword on about 300 pages and point it to our homepage? There are breadcrumbs on our site, but the home link uses an image (It's a picture of a house, if you're curious.) Am I better off just to change that to our most relevant keyword? I could use any advice on internal links for establishing better homepage relevancy. Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | osaka730 -
Redirecting from https to http - will pass whole link juice to new http website pages?
Hi making permanent 301 redirection from https to http - will pass whole link juice to new http website pages?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Aman_1230 -
Keyword Phrase vs. separate keywords - Title Tag best practices
Hello, What is your opinion about when to use a keyword phrase vs. 2 keywords, separated by a comma, in the title tag? For example, on this page, the title could be either: NLP Hypnosis, Language Patterns | Nlpca.com or NLP and Hypnosis Including Language Patterns | Nlpca.com Which do you guys think is best with respect to rankings, updates, and future updates?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Advice on using the disavow tool to remove hacked website links
Hey Everyone, Back in December, our website suffered an attack which created links to other hacked webistes which anchor text such as "This is an excellent time to discuss symptoms, fa" "Open to members of the nursing/paramedical profes" "The organs in the female reproductive system incl" The links were only visible when looking at the Cache of the page. We got these links removed and removed all traces of the attack such as pages which were created in their own directory on our server 3 months later I'm finding websites linking to us with similar anchor text to the ones above, however they're linking to the pages that were created on our server when we were attacked and they've been removed. So one of my questions is does this effect our site? We've seen some of our best performing keywords drop over the last few months and I have a feeling it's due to these spammy links. Here's a website that links to us <colgroup><col width="751"></colgroup>
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | blagger
| http://www.fashion-game.com/extreme/blog/page-9 | If you do view source or look at the cached version then you'll find a link right at the bottom left corner. We have 268 of these links from 200 domains. Contacting these sites to have these links removed would be a very long process as most of them probably have no idea that those links even exist and I don't have the time to explain to each one how to remove the hacked files etc. I've been looking at using the Google Disavow tool to solve this problem but I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not. We haven't had any warnings from Google about our site being spam or having too many spam links, so do we need to use the tool? Any advice would be very much appreciated. Let me know if you require more details about our problem. <colgroup><col width="355"></colgroup>
| | | |0 -
I would like to know if there is a tool to know what keywords
Hi everyone, I am looking for a keywords searcher or a program that can help me to know which keywords my competitors are using. thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | lnietob0 -
Switching existing website to a Wordpress Site and afraid of losing top spot
I am going to be switching my current site from a standard html site to a wordpress site. I'm kind of paranoid of losing my top spot for the keyterms. If I keep the content the same, and keep the same amount of image alt tags, the same anchor text etc, nothing should change right? Grateful for any advice. Thanks Will
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | willie790