Should I delete Meta Keywords from a website?
-
Hi Guys,
I've been reading various posts on the Q&A section here at Moz about Meta keywords.
I understand that meta keywords are not relevant with Google and that Bing signals this as spam.
I'm optimising existing websites which already have meta keywords in the html coding.
My question is:
If I delete ALL meta keyword coding will this have any negative impact whatsoever?
Thanks Mozers
Jason
-
They have no shame when it comes to link spam LOL. You should know this by now. This person seems no different then the people that email blast cialis discounts.
-
What about comment spam on seven-year-old posts? The links are all nofollow, FYI.
-
HI all,
I was about to embark on a meta keyword application exercise but now will refrain from it. All this was very informative, I was wondering whether to add them as not.
I agree it will always be content over keyword any day, hands down.
Regards,
Kamran
-
-
Thanks Dean,
I try to apply the same individual responses on Social Media. People take the time to respond individually and that warrants a personalised response.
All too often this is a failing of businesses on Social Media.
Jason
-
Congratulations on your new position Jason.
Also nice to see that you have responded to everyone who made a comment.
-
Hi Dean,
Think content rather than keywords - spot on!
As I've only been in my job for 6 weeks, my fear is if I delete them it may have a negative impact on our search engine results.
So far deleting them is more likely than not.
I'll keep you informed of any impact this may have.
Thanks
Jason
-
Hi David,
So far I'm in favour of deleting them, but with your response I'm in a bit of a dilemma.
I agree with your premise that you should optimise for people and not search engines, also the point about not knowing how people reach your site.
The meta keywords is the last of my tasks as meta tags, title tags and other on page text has been fully optimised. However I am finding a direct correlation between meta keywords and search engine rankings. Our sites feature in the top 5 searches on Google but 30-40 on Yahoo and Bing. So after optimising all other areas of the websites, meta keywords seem to be the cause of this. So the sink is leaking somewhere.
I really appreciate your detailed response and will take some time ponder over my options.
Thanks
Jason
-
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your reply. With your advice and the majority of responses to this post it seems like deleting them might be my best option.
If I delete them and it has a negative effect I'll keep you all informed!
Thanks
Jason
-
Thanks for clarifying this Kevin.
Our websites ranks high (top 5) on Google but ranks around 30-40 on Yahoo and Bing so there does seem to be a direct correlation.
I think the very nature of meta keywords is stuffing, so I'm swaying on the side of deleting them altogether.
Thanks for your response.
Jason
-
Thanks Evan
-
Hi Mark,
I too analyse competitors websites in the same way, it helps me with SEO and copywriting.
This is one of the main reasons I want to delete them from our sites.
Thanks for your feedback.
Jason
-
Thanks Benjamin,
There certainly seems to be harm in leaving them when considering Bing. I've noticed that our websites all ranks within the top 5 searches on Google but Bing and Yahoo we don't fair so well.
I am hesitant to delete them as you rightfully point out, they may be important in the future.
Cheers
Jason
-
Thanks for your response Ruben.
There's a few differing opinions on this thread so I'll take your advice and balance my options. Unfortunately the link you kindly provided cannot be found
Thanks
Jason
-
I agree with Mark on this one. As long as they are not stuffed, it may not be that big of a deal, but I don't include them.
-
I also would suggest that you delete them as no search engine use them and as already suggested it gives your competitors a list of keywords that you are trying to optimise for.
Think content rather than a list of keywords
-
I am in favor of keeping them. One rule we live for is "Not optimizing only for Google, yahoo or any one specific platform"
If the keywords are direct and well chosen, they will not hurt you. If not, its more than likely there are some other areas of your site that could use improvements as well. You never know how people will be getting to your site, or by what means they will get there. Removing something that is well structured, even if it's only used by a select few platforms is not a good idea IMHO.
If they are stuffed, then yes, it would be a good idea to revise them, but not completely remove them. Is the keywords tag the most important factor? No, not by any means. i would take a hard look at your description and page titles before I would suggest worrying about keywords.
A quote someone once told me about SEO "If my sink is leaking, I fix the leak. I don't throw away the whole sink, or go buy a new one, unless the old one cannot be repaired."
-
The short answer is no - it will have no negative impact.
-
No problem deleting them. Google and Yahoo does not use it as a ranking factor. Also, if stuffed could impact your rankings on Bing who uses as a spam signal.
-
When I'm doing keyword research, one of the first things I do is go on competitor websites and see if they have the meta keyword tag. If they do, then it instantly gives me access to all the keywords that they're targeting and allows me to work on beating them. Deleting your meta keyword tag prevents your competitors from doing this to you.
-
I would keep them, i even still use them with sites I'm building now because even though one search engine says they don't use them maybe another will and who knows if and when they will be important again. In my opinion no harm no foul. I leave mine.
-
Hi Jason,
This thread is from a couple of years ago, but it still holds true: http://moz.com/community/q/meta-keywords-should-we-use-them-or-nothttp://moz.com/community/q/meta-keywords-should-we-use-them-or-not
Before you do anything, wait for a second, third, and, maybe even, fourth opinion, but deleting all your meta keywords should not change your rankings in google at all...and it might even help your rankings in Bing...but it certainly won't hurt you.
- Ruben
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 -
Multiple E-commerce website
Following is a scenario where we plan to have a single database and different sites pulling product information from this. There will be a primary site with all the products listed and then there will be other category based website with the same products. All transactions will happen on respective website. The common factor will be products and its information. Our question is should we have different item numbers for the same product listed on two websites or they can be the same.?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | promodirect
e.g.
Website A: Product - Blue Shoes and item number '123'
Product page url will be: websitea.com/blueshoes-123.html Website B: Product - Blue Shoes and item number '123' or should the item# should be unique e.g. 'B123'
Product page url will be: websiteb.com/blueshoes-123.html
or
If item number is unique the product page url will be: websiteb.com/blueshoes-B123.html Please advise what is the best way forward.0 -
How to re-rank an established website with new content
I can't help but feel this is a somewhat untapped resource with a distinct lack of information.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ChimplyWebGroup
There is a massive amount of information around on how to rank a new website, or techniques in order to increase SEO effectiveness, but to rank a whole new set of pages or indeed to 're-build' a site that may have suffered an algorithmic penalty is a harder nut to crack in terms of information and resources. To start I'll provide my situation; SuperTED is an entertainment directory SEO project.
It seems likely we may have suffered an algorithmic penalty at some point around Penguin 2.0 (May 22nd) as traffic dropped steadily since then, but wasn't too aggressive really. Then to coincide with the newest Panda 27 (According to Moz) in late September this year we decided it was time to re-assess tactics to keep in line with Google's guidelines over the two years. We've slowly built a natural link-profile over this time but it's likely thin content was also an issue. So beginning of September up to end of October we took these steps; Contacted webmasters (and unfortunately there was some 'paid' link-building before I arrived) to remove links 'Disavowed' the rest of the unnatural links that we couldn't have removed manually. Worked on pagespeed as per Google guidelines until we received high-scores in the majority of 'speed testing' tools (e.g WebPageTest) Redesigned the entire site with speed, simplicity and accessibility in mind. Htaccessed 'fancy' URLs to remove file extensions and simplify the link structure. Completely removed two or three pages that were quite clearly just trying to 'trick' Google. Think a large page of links that simply said 'Entertainers in London', 'Entertainers in Scotland', etc. 404'ed, asked for URL removal via WMT, thinking of 410'ing? Added new content and pages that seem to follow Google's guidelines as far as I can tell, e.g;
Main Category Page Sub-category Pages Started to build new links to our now 'content-driven' pages naturally by asking our members to link to us via their personal profiles. We offered a reward system internally for this so we've seen a fairly good turnout. Many other 'possible' ranking factors; such as adding Schema data, optimising for mobile devices as best we can, added a blog and began to blog original content, utilise and expand our social media reach, custom 404 pages, removed duplicate content, utilised Moz and much more. It's been a fairly exhaustive process but we were happy to do so to be within Google guidelines. Unfortunately, some of those link-wheel pages mentioned previously were the only pages driving organic traffic, so once we were rid of these traffic has dropped to not even 10% of what it was previously. Equally with the changes (htaccess) to the link structure and the creation of brand new pages, we've lost many of the pages that previously held Page Authority.
We've 301'ed those pages that have been 'replaced' with much better content and a different URL structure - http://www.superted.com/profiles.php/bands-musicians/wedding-bands to simply http://www.superted.com/profiles.php/wedding-bands, for example. Therefore, with the loss of the 'spammy' pages and the creation of brand new 'content-driven' pages, we've probably lost up to 75% of the old website, including those that were driving any traffic at all (even with potential thin-content algorithmic penalties). Because of the loss of entire pages, the changes of URLs and the rest discussed above, it's likely the site looks very new and probably very updated in a short period of time. What I need to work out is a campaign to drive traffic to the 'new' site.
We're naturally building links through our own customerbase, so they will likely be seen as quality, natural link-building.
Perhaps the sudden occurrence of a large amount of 404's and 'lost' pages are affecting us?
Perhaps we're yet to really be indexed properly, but it has been almost a month since most of the changes are made and we'd often be re-indexed 3 or 4 times a week previous to the changes.
Our events page is the only one without the new design left to update, could this be affecting us? It potentially may look like two sites in one.
Perhaps we need to wait until the next Google 'link' update to feel the benefits of our link audit.
Perhaps simply getting rid of many of the 'spammy' links has done us no favours - I should point out we've never been issued with a manual penalty. Was I perhaps too hasty in following the rules? Would appreciate some professional opinion or from anyone who may have experience with a similar process before. It does seem fairly odd that following guidelines and general white-hat SEO advice could cripple a domain, especially one with age (10 years+ the domain has been established) and relatively good domain authority within the industry. Many, many thanks in advance. Ryan.0 -
Can I Use Meta NoIndex to Block Unwanted Links?
I have a forum thread on my site that is completely user generated, not spammy at all, but it is attracting about 45 backlinks from really spammy sites. Usually when this happens, the thread is created by a spammer and I just 404 it. But in this instance, the thread is completely legit, and I wouldn't want to 404 it because users could find it useful. If I add a meta noindex, nofollow tag to the header, will the spammy pagerank still be passed? How best can I protect myself from these low quality backlinks? I don't want to get slapped by Penguin! **Note: I cannot find contact information from the spam sites and it's in a foreign language.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TMI.com0 -
Keyword + Location domains
Hi All, Just wanted to get everyones opinions on this, I see it more and more now where businesses own multiple domains for [keyword] + [location], they have multiple domains for different locations and setup individual sites on them. I see these types of domains rank very easily for medium competition keywords, as long as the on page is good and there are a handful of back links, they rank. just to clarify, for example - iphonerepairmanchester.co.uk (purely an example not sure how this site ranks!!) What are Googles views on this? I've always insisted its better to build a strong brand with the "real" business rather than creating extra websites named by keywords. But I've recently had a client want to pursue this and it seems it currently works, but is there a danger down the line Google will penalise it? The short term traffic increase is undeniable but like anything in the world of Google at the moment, I'd rather persuade clients not to go this route if it will protect future interests.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gamnaking10 -
Are Links from blogs with person using keyword anchor text a Penguin 2.0 issue?
Hello, I am continuing a complete clean up of a clients link profile and would like to know if Penguin is against links from blogs with the user including keywords as anchor text? So far I have been attempting to get them removed before I go for a disavow. An example would be the work clothing comment at the bottom of: http://www.fashionstyleyou.co.uk/beat-the-caffeine-rush.html/comment-page-1 I am also questioning if we should keep any link directories, so far I have been ruthless, but worry I will be losing a hell of a lot of links. For example I have kept the following: http://www.business-directory-uk.co.uk//clothing.htm Your comments are welcomed!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarzVentures0 -
What is the best link delete service?
Does anyone know what is the best link delete service? I have heard of removem and linkdelete Which one do you think it best? Is there something better out there? Thank you.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shopwood0 -
Can I just delete pages to get rid of bad back-links to those pages?
I just picked up a client who had built a large set of landing pages (1000+) and built a huge amount of spammy links to them (too many to even consider manually requesting deletion for from the respective webmasters). We now think that google may also be seeing the 'landing pages' as 'doorway pages' as there are so many of them 1000+ and they are all optimized for specific keywords and generally pretty low quality. Also, the client received an unnatural links found email from google. I'm going to download the links discovered by google around the date of that email and check out if there are any that look specifily bad but I'm sure it will be just one of the several thosand bad links they built. Anyway, they are now wanting to clean up their act and are considering deleting the landing/doorway pages in a hope to a. rank better for the other non landing/doorway pages (Ie category and sub cats) but more to the crux of my question.. b. essentially get rid of all the 1000s of bad links that were built to those landing/doorway pages. - will this work? if we just remove those pages and use 404 or 410 codes will google see any inbound (external) links to those pages as basicly no longer being links to the site? or is the TLD still likely to be penilized for all the bad links coming into no longer existing URLs on it? Also, any thoughts on whether a 404 or 410 would be better is appreciated. Some info on that here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=64033 I guess another option is the disavow feature with google, but Matt Cutts video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA&feature=em- kind of makes it sound like this should just be used for a few links, not 1000s... Thanks so much!!!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | zingseo0