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
-
Meta tags for international domains
Hi Mozers I have 3 top level domains co.nz com.au and com each meta tag for the home page is unique for each country and I have tried to figure this out for the last 3 months, but unfortunately I can't seem to pin point why all 3 meta tags are showing up exactly the same. It seems all meta tags are showing up for the co.nz domain. In the attachments you can see all urls are showing up correctly for each country specific domain, however the meta tag description defaults to the NZ Any help around this would be much appreciated! Thanks all
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Overall traffic increasing but specific short tailed keywords decreasing any ideas?
Something very strange has happened regarding my website traffic when making a comparison to the first six months of 2012 and then 2014. Anybody got any ideas? From my Google analytics from 1 January 2014 to 1 July in other words six months my total traffic on my website was 30,209. Not provided source ( what does this mean ? ) was very high at 23,141 but two of the my main short tail keywords I've targeted in the past "Whitby holiday cottages “only equal 254 and "Whitby cottages" was only 176. When I made a comparison with the same time period below in 2012 the website traffic this year as gone up greatly by almost 20000, but the two of my money short tail keywords as gone down greatly! If I compare the same time frame for 2012 the overall traffic was only 13,380. Not provided source was nowhere near as high at only 1836 which is also much less than above in 2014 but the short tail keywords I targeted "Whitby holiday cottages was almost 10 times higher at 2005 and "Whitby cottages “much higher at 613. I ran the questionnaire on http://www.mytrafficdropped.com/quiz/ regarding Panda and particularly Penguin and its association with back links. The article says that Penguin didn't hit the overall keywords, but only specific ones if they been targeted on the following dates the time points of April 24, 2012 and May 25, 2012 which are known Penguin rollout dates. So when I checked the two short tail keywords above for those two dates the figures did seem to drop from 10 hits a day to 5 but then went back up immediately to approximately 10 hits a day during the two-month period which suggested to me that I'd not been hit by Penguin on those dates. So when you look at the comparison the first six months of 2012 and then 2014 there is no doubt that money short tail keywords of dropped off dramatically for me but the overall website traffic has gone up dramatically. Some of the increase in traffic will be down to time and more articles/pages etc.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WhitbyHolidayCottages
The two short tail keywords I mention above I know I've dropped in Google rankings I used to be position three page one and the site is now position 10 so I would assume that's why I've dropped in traffic for those phrases.
Has anybody got any idea what's happened? I can honestly say that I've not noticed it in bookings on the website business seems about the same overall.0 -
What happens when content on your website (and blog) is an exact match to multiple sites?
In general, I understand that having duplicate content on your website is a bad thing. But I see a lot of small businesses (specifically dentists in this example) who hire the same company to provide content to their site. They end up with the EXACT same content as other dentists. Here is a good example: http://www.hodnettortho.com/blog/2013/02/valentine’s-day-and-your-teeth-2/ http://www.braces2000.com/blog/2013/02/valentine’s-day-and-your-teeth-2/ http://www.gentledentalak.com/blog/2013/02/valentine’s-day-and-your-teeth/ If you google the title of that blog article you find tons of the same article all over the place. So, overall, doesn't this make the content on these blogs irrelevant? Does this hurt the SEO on these sites at all? What is the value of having completely unique content on your site/blog vs having duplicate content like this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MorganPorter0 -
Website Vulnerability Leading to Doorway Page Spam. Need Help.
Keywords he is ranking for , houston dwi lawyer, houston dwi attorney and etc.. Client was acquired in June and since then we have done nothing but build high quality links to the website. None of our clients were dropped/dinged or impacted by the panda/penguin updates in 2012 or updates previously published via Google. Which proves we do quality SEO work. We went ahead and started duplicating links which worked for other legal clients and 5 months later this client is either dropping or staying in local maps results and we are performing very badly in organic results. Some more history..... When he first engaged our company we switched his website from a CMS called plone to word press. During our move I ran some searches to figure out which pages we needed to 301 and we came across many profile pages or member pages created on the clients CMS (PLONE). These pages were very spammy and linked to other plone sites using car model,make,year type keywords (ex:jeep cherokee dealerships). I went through these sites to see if they were linking back and could not find any back links to my clients website. Obviously nobody authorized these pages, they all looked very hackish and it seemed as though there was a vulnerability on his plone CMS installation which nobody caught. Fast forward 5 months and the newest OSE update is showing me a good 50+ back links with unrelated anchor text back links. These anchor text links are the same color as the background and can only be found if you hover your mouse over certain areas of the site. All of these sites are built on Plone and allot of them are linked to other businesses or community websites. These websites obviously have no clue they have been hacked or are being used for black hat purposes. There are dozens of unrelated anchor text links being used on external websites which are pointing back to our clients website. Examples: <a class="clickable title link-pivot" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text">autex Isuzu, </a><a class="clickable title link-pivot" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text">Toyota service department ratings, </a><a class="clickable title link-pivot" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text">die cast BMW and etc..</a> Obviously the first step is to use the disavow link tool, which will be completed this week. The second step is to take some feedback from the SEO community. It seems like these pages are automatically created using some type of bot. It will be very tedious if we have to continually remove these links. I hope there is a way to notify Google that these websites are all plone and have a vulnerability, which black hats are using to harm the innocent... If i cannot get Google to handle this, then the only other option is to start fresh with a new domain name. What would you do in this situation. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thank you
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | waqid0 -
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 -
Keyword Rich Domains on Same IP
In addition to my main website, I want to create two new sites for the upcoming football and basketball seasons. By starting now, I'm thinking I have enough time to get them ranked decently. I have purchased www.collegefootballpredictions.net for the upcoming football seasons. The intent here is two fold. First, I'd like to rank in the top 3 for "College Football Predictions." Second, and this is why I'm thinking that Google won't hate me for the approach, is that someone looking for that search term is much more likely to convert on a landing page geared for them then on my main website. If the goal of a separate website is truly to compliment the main website, then is it considered white hat? I'm thinking that, as long as my intentions are pure, they should go on the same IP. Placing them on separate IPs could be a good way of letting the big G know that I'm trying to cheat the system and get away with it.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PatrickGriffith0 -
What Google considers to be a branded keyword?
We can set our own keywords as branded in SeoMoz campaign, but Google would not necessarily see them like branded. After reading the Blog post at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update I had a question: Are there known rules (or at least guesses) what Google considers a branded keyword/anchor text? I guess the first one would be your website domain. So bluewidget.com for example would be a branded keyword for bluewidget.com website. How about Blue Widget or Blue Widget Company?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SirMax0 -
If I were to change the geographic keyword such as "foreclosures in Dallas" on 20 related blogs to "foreclosures in Los Angeles" what would happen?
In other words I'm wondering if someone built up an internet presence for their company through multiple websites over the years and then decided to move to another part of the united states, would it work to change all the keywords to the new location? Would that work toward getting them ranked in the new area or would you have to create entirely new websites? Thanks guys.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | whorneff3100