Why would one of the big 4 banks in Australia recently start defining meta-keywords?
-
Hi All,
Hope everyone had a nice weekend. I just stumbled upon one of our competitors who for some reason is all of a sudden defining meta keywords for their product pages.
I find this extremely strange since its a definite no-no to define these?
They are one of the largest (Chase, Barclays equivalent) in Australia with a large digital team. Do they know something we don't?
Hope someone can help.
Cheers,
Dave
-
first - a question - are they doing this intelligently? meaning are the keyword tags unique or reasonably unique to the page at hand?
if so, here might be 2 good reasons:
1 - They use them internally as a simple way for lower level people to understand what the page is "for"
2 - They use them as part of content curation or internal search
if not, then they may be generally not paying attention and some CMS technician is just filling in the boxes.
-
Just because they're a bank with a large digital team doesn't mean they put so much thought into it, and I'm willing to bet that's the case. Maybe someone noticed an empty field in their CMS and took it upon themselves to fill it in. Maybe the digital team fought a losing battle with an exec and shrugged it off because it was an easy way to make a C-level happy without actually hurting anything. It doesn't matter because it's neither good nor bad.
Also, don't put any stock into the hype around the thinking that someone might use it to "steal" your keywords. Have you ever actually heard of a case where this happened? Where it hurt someone? No. It's a ghost story that SEOs have been parroting for years, probably based on some long ago throwaway speculation. Besides, you're a bank. No one needs to snoop around in your code to know what your target keywords are when it's that straightforward.
-
Hello David,
In my experience, Meta keywords have no negative impact on rankings and neither positive. I certainly agree with EGOL that if you are smart, title tags are good for you understand what the page is targeting any ways…
I personally don’t think there is something they know and we don’t but yeah as you said they are banks, they care less about what other people extract from their data as they are number one (or they easily can outrank their competitors) because of huge budgets and talented big teams.
They may be using wrong keywords in their Meta keywords to misguide people who believe too much on meta keywords of competitors. (possibilities)
I think in the world of today, using or not using Meta keyword has no huge benefits… just a thought!
Hope this helps!
-
My thoughts exactly - as long as they haven't found out something new about the meta , its all good.
It just seems silly for them to all of a sudden define them .
Cheers mate
-
The bank.
I have keyword meta information on some of my sites. I doubt that it has any negative value with the search engines. I don't think it is helpful with any search engines that produce significant traffic in the United States.
The people who look at it might get "some idea" of the keywords that the page targets, but anyone with any skill can look at the title and the visible on-page and know what the real targets are without looking at the meta. The meta is smoke. The short tail is the small part of the target, that's whats in the meta. The long tail is where the money is.
-
Who has zero fear? the bank? Google?
-
They have zero fear of people who use meta keywords as a data source.
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
-
Keyword Rich Domain
We purchased a keyword rich domain name to use with an existing website. What is the best way to use this domain? Below are some thoughts, I welcome any input. Use this domain as an add-on to the main domain, but only have it load one page off the main domain? Would that cause duplicate content issues? Create a single static page of content for the domain (separate from main domain) Redirect domain to page on master domain, would we loose any benefits of the keyword rich domain? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | idlwebinc0 -
One domain - Multiple servers
Can I have the root domain pointing to one server and other URLs on the domain pointing to another server without redirecting, domain masking or HTML masking? Dealing with an old site that is a mess. I want to avoid migrating the old website to the new environment. I want to work on a page by page and section by section basis, and whatever gets ready to go live I will release on the new server while keeping all other pages untouched and live on the old server. What are your recommendations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Keywords Dropping Out
Hi In March I've seen a lot of keywords go from being ranked, to dropping out completely. We usually get under 1000 drop in and out each month, but 2,500 dropped out this month. Some are not focus keywords I'd be concerned about, but then some are.... I am trying to work out why and could use some help. We haven't changed anything on the pages & here are some examples: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/dollies-load-movers-door-skates - previously ranked for 'Dollies' position 6 now unranked http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/sack-trucks - ranked position 11 for 'Folding Sack Truck' now unranked http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/portable-workbenches-trestles - ranked position 7 for portable workbenches now unranked. These pages do still rank for other keywords, so aren't out of Google completely. I'm just trying to identify if we have any other issues Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Keyword phrase for entire site
Hey everyone! I'm fairly new to SEO but I have a large number of sites I'm needing to SEO. I'm a tad confused as to how many keyword phrases I should use throughout my site. For example, my site is www.uluru.travel. I want to rank highlight for the phrase 'uluru tours' throughout the site, as many of my pages list uluru tours and people searching for this phrase are my type of customers. As you can see I've tried to do some basic on page SEO for that phrase by including it in page title, headings etc. But the entire site doesn't seem to rank very well. Would you guys suggest trying to target 'uluru tours' phrase throughout the entire site of just focus a couple of pages on this term? Any advice is greatly appreciated guys! Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mysites0 -
Why Keyword Ranking Fluctuate?
Hi All, I have a shoes website and I am working on it from last four months. I am targeting four main keywords but I have some issues with ranking. First one is that keywords ranking fluctuate many time a day but they remain on the same page. Second one is that these keywords remain on the same page for 2 to 3 week and than suddenly they drop down in the ranking. Please help me regarding these issue. Waiting for replies. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cuttingseo0 -
Avoiding keyword cannibalisation in Wordpress Structure
Hi all, I've been planning the WordPress structure for a client for a long time, and soon need to get started. I keep coming back to this problem / question, whereby there will be a static Page with a name like "Christmas Collection", but there also has to be a Category called "Christmas" to accomodate new content. Is this likely to cause serious keyword cannabalisation? It's a non-ecommerce site To elaborate we need to have the following static Pages: christmas collection easter collection halloween Collection and each of these Page's will be populated with related Posts (based on category ID) after the Page's content. And these corresponding Categories need to be similarly named. As there's no apparent relation between Pages and Categories, I keep coming back to the concern that having a Page named "Christmas Collection" and a Category called "Christmas" is a big SEO NO NO. Any thoughts, opinions, workarounds much appreciated! Regards, c
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | councilflat0 -
Should I Decrease My Keyword Density
On SEOmoz's On-page tool it is telling me that I should cut the number of phrases for a specific key phrase almost in half, from 27 to 15. However my keyword density for this page is only 1.68%. I would have thought that was a good keyword density to have, if not even a little higher. Should I trust the tool and decrease this keyword phrase? Would love to hear from anyone with experience in this. If you want to see the page it is http://www.mybluedish.com/. The key phrase is "satellite internet"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet0 -
Content that is split into 4 pages, should I consolidate?
I am working on improving a website that has each section split into four pages. For example, if Indonesia Vacation was a section, it would have its main page, www.domain.com/indonesia-vacation, and the about, fact sheet, and tips on three other pages www.domain.com/indonesia-vacation-1 www.domain.com/indonesia-vacation-2 www.domain.com/indonesia-vacation-3 The pages share very similar title tags and I am worried it is hurting the main page for placement.. So to conserve link juice, would it make sense to have them all one page? There is not so much content that it would affect load time. My strategy would be to have all content available and part of the main page and 301 the three URL's back to the main page: www.domain.com/indonesia-vacation Any insight would be greatly appreciated!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MattAaron0