Meta description & Meta keywords
-
Good morning,
One of our HTML experts, just told me that Google is not reading meta keywords or meta description - and they (or one of them) are no longer part of my website SEO ranking
Do you know where can i read about it?
Are other SE do look at these parameters?
Thank you
SEOWiseUs
-
Thanks Keri!
-
I don't have hard data, but my understanding is that Google doesn't look at meta descriptions for rankings but they are important in helping CTR when they're shown in the SERPs.
-
This is very interesting, I'm getting conflicting opinions from the guys here at work and on the Q&A here. Like you say, some major website use the tag as well.
It would be awesome if anyone from Moz has some actual data on this, hint, hint
-
the general consensus is that Google does make use of the Description, more specifically used in the brief description in results among other user experience related items. It is widely accepted that the description is not used as a metric for ranking though. I personally take exception to this line of thought, because I have definitly seen an effect on rankings when a description has been optimized. I am not going to say this happens 100% of the time, however i have seen a direct correlation.
The keywords tag is completly irrelevant and can cause a number of problems. Two are, Bing actually considers it a spam flag and by having the keywords tags it allows competitors to easily see what you are optimizing for....as someone already mentioned. I do find it interesting that some reputable sites are using it. So perhaps i am missing out on some good info....
-
thank you very much
-
thank you very much
-
You can read more about the meta discription on the offical google website here
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79812
They do use meta description, though bear in mind they don't have to. So you will find that in some rsearch results they will change it.
You can read (and watch a video) about the meta keywords here
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html
That's Matt Cutts, who is head of web spam at google.
Hope that clear things up for you!
-
meta keywords are no longer read by google. It's been abused in the past and it's not relevant anymore.
Drop the meta keywords as it gives valuable information to your competition on which keywords you target .
the meta description is still working and relevant, and should be part of your SEO strategy,
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
-
Keywords in Paragraphs: How much do they matter at Google?
Hi all, Generally we care a lot about keywords at headings, title tags, URL, etc. always. But I wonder how much impact they have being in paragraphs. How much do they matter at paragraphs? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google AMP (accelerated mobile pages), can it be used for non-Google news and Ecommerce Websites?
Mozzers, I've been doing a lot of research on Google's new Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) https://moz.com/blog/accelerated-mobile-pages-whiteboard-friday. From what I'm seeing, these AMP version websites are only for Google News-worthy websites such as New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and the BuzzFeeds of the world. But what about Ecommerce websites like Ebay or Amazon? Will AMP versions of "scotch tape" via OfficeDepot work in the SERP's on non-Google News cards?
Algorithm Updates | | Shawn1240 -
Which domain is better - a Long descriptive or Short Abbreviated?
I want to start a new company and have an option to have a long and descriptive domain or buy out the 5 letter Abbreviated domain for $2000. abstract example:
Algorithm Updates | | NikitaG
LegalMigrationServiceCapeTown.com
V.S.
LMSCT.com The advantage of the shorter domain is that it is 13 years old.
so now for the SEO - which one do you think is better? is Exact Match Domain a better thing for SEO or can I get away with a shorter domain? I can buy both, but which one should I build on as the main domain? any advice would be much appreciated, as well as the PROS & CONS of both.0 -
Post penguin & panda update. what would be a good seo strategies for brand new sites
Hi there. I have the luxury of launching a few sites after the penguin and panda updates, so I can start from scratch and hopefully do it right. I will get SEO companies to help me with this so i just want to ask for advices on what would be a good strategies for a brand new site. my understand of the new updates is this content and user experience is important, like how long they spend, how many pages etc social media is important. we intent to engage FB and twitter alot. in New Zealand, not too many people use google+ so we will probbaly just concentrate on the first two hopefully we will try to get people to share our website via social media, apparent that is important should only concentrate on high quality backlinks with a good diverse set of alt tags, but concentrate on branding rather than keywords. Am i correct to say that so far? if that is the principle, what would be the strategy to implement these goals? Links to any articles would also be great please. Love learning. i just want to do this right and hopefully try to future proof the sites against updates as possible. i guess quality content and links will most likely to be safe. Thank you for your help.
Algorithm Updates | | btrinh0 -
Content Caching Memory & Removal of 301 Redirect for Relieving Links Penalty
Hi, A client site has had very poor link legacy, stretching for over 5 years. I started the campaign a year ago, providing valuable good quality links. Link removals and creating a disavow to Google have been done, however after months and months of waiting nothing has happened. If anything, after the recent penguin update, results have been further affected. A 301 redirect was undertaken last year, consequently associating those bad links with the new site structure. I have since removed the 301 redirect in an attempt to detach this legacy, however with little success. I have read up on this and not many people appear to agree whether this will work. Therefore, my new decision is to start a fresh using a new domain, switching from the .com to .co.uk version, helping remove all legacy and all association with the spam ridden .com. However, my main concern with this is whether Google will forever cach content from the spammy .com and remember it, because the content on the new .co.uk site will be exactly the same (content of great quality, receiving hundreds of visitors each month from the blog section along) The problem is definitely link related and NOT content as I imagine people may first query. This could then cause duplicate content, knowing that this content pre-existed on another domain - I will implement a robots.txt file removing all of the .com site , as well as a no index no follow - and I understand you can present a site removal to Google within webmaster tools to help fast track the deindexation of the spammy .com - then once it has been deindexed, the new .co.uk site will go live with the exact same content. So my question is whether Google will then completely forget that this content has ever existed, allowing me to use exactly the same content on the new .co.uk domain without the threat of a duplicate content issue? Also, any insights or experience in the removal of a 301 redirect, detaching legacy and its success would also be very helpful! Thank you, Denver
Algorithm Updates | | ProdoDigital0 -
Mozcast: 5th & 9th May - what's shaking up?
What's going on at the moment, i can't find any info on the 5/9th May but Mozcast is showing some movement. Anyone have any info? Cheers
Algorithm Updates | | Bondara0 -
Impressions & Traffic WAY Down. Where to start?
Beginning around November 1st, I began to notice a continual, gradual drop in impressions and traffic. During the holiday season we typically see a decline in business so I initially passed it off as that, but there has been no rebound and I'm really confused on where to begin looking to figure this out. Daily impressions have now dropped from 20,000 all the way down to 5,000 and it has taken a major toll on the business (see attachment for graph of this). Some Background Information: My Site has been very static for the past 8 month's (since April '12). Admittedly Overly static with very little other than a blog post here and there added. However, during these 8 month's traffic jumped 30% so we were riding that wave and feeling confident that our past efforts built a great foundation. I'm not aware of anything even remotely black hat that has ever been done. Everything is very much on the up and up and done with the user in mind. I'm unable to track anything to a Panda update due to the consistent, gradual nature of the decline. However, with some important search queries completely falling off the map, it feels to me like we are being penalized or affected by a permanent algo change. In GWMT that are a variety of important search queries that show a change of -100%. These terms do show an average position, but when I manually search for them they are no where to be found in Google search results. This is very strange to me. It feels like we've been blacklisted for some of our more important keywords. We had a major site relaunch on January 20th (a week ago). However the downward trend was in place well before this. The site is www.mycreativeshop.com To sum it up, I'm extremely confused and very concerned with what this drop is doing to the company. I've never been in this position as we've worked very hard to lay a solid foundation and have always seen a continual, positive traffic increase. It then seemed to just start turning downward one day and won't stop. If anybody has some suggestions of how to try to get to the bottom of this and learn what is really taking place it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, -J Wdab7Sk
Algorithm Updates | | cre80 -
Ranking #1 for decent traffic keywords, but not receiving any traffic?
A site I work on is ranked number 1 for a few keywords. To see how much a keyword is searched per month I rely on Google Adwords Keyword tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). Using this tool I see that the keyword receives 880 local monthly searches and another keyword they rank #1 for receives 1300 local monthly searches. To me these keywords are not the biggest as far as traffic but they are not small by any means. Now here is the issue. Like mentioned above, the site nmber 1 for multiple keywords. They have been ranked number 1 for these keywords for months. Looking in analytics the other day I notice that on a month to month basis both of these keywords are getting 1, or 2 visits. This past month (October) one of the keywords did not receive ANY visits, and that is being ranked #1 for a 1300 monthly searched keyword. It just doesn’t make sense. I would imagine getting at least 100 or so visits a month from these search terms. Could someone please help me understand this a little bit better?
Algorithm Updates | | WhiteHat120