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The importance of meta keywords?
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Hello,
Is adding meta keywords still worth doing nowadays? I have been reading and hearing some different opinions about it. For a ' beginner ' in this field it is hard to find a definite answer to this questions.. Thank you for reading(and answering) my question!
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Meta keywords have never hurt any of our customer sites and can only help with other less known search engines. So I disagree with most here and say "keep them!"
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Hi EPD,
I wanted to add one thing that hasn't been touched on. Meta keywords used to be extremely popular but people started abusing them - they would add dozens or even hundreds of meta keywords to low-quality landing pages to try and rank for various keywords. Google eventually caught on to this spammy tactic so that's why they are no longer a part of the algorithm.
There is one scenario in which meta keywords can be useful: internal site search. If you have an internal site search box on your site, you can add alternate product names or misspellings in the meta keyword field for popular products and it will help those products take users to the proper page and provide a good UX since most site search processors include meta keywords field when determining results. For example, If I sell gonorrhea testing and everyone misspells it, they may frequently get a no results page. Adding misspellings to meta keywords field helps more people find the product they are looking for.
I would try to limit this to about five meta keywords per product though so it doesn't look spammy.
Cheers!
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I wrote an article on this exact topic awhile back. Bottom line, don't use the meta keywords tag. It's a waste of time for rankings and might be a good way for your competitors to know exactly what you're trying to rank for.
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Hey there,
Thank you guys so much for the quick response! You've helped me loads!
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Google officially announced in 2009 that meta keywords were not a factor. Including Meta keywords can be a negative instead of being a positive factor, as they are generally words which are inconsistent without meaning anything to a user or a search engine.
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Hi there,
tldr; There is no importance.
I have 2 things to say:
- In 2009 there was a post and a video stating that Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking.
Post, Video - Personally, I believe that there's no reason to use them. There are a lot of "experts" that say you may not be 100% optimized using meta keywords. Other directly say that you will me penalized. As Google says it is not used, just dont use it.
Another idea is that this tag is public, so you may be saying publicly to your competitors what are your important keywords.
Best Luck.
GR. - In 2009 there was a post and a video stating that Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking.
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Hi EPPD!
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.
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Hi there
No, I would not add these. To Thomas' point, search engines don't bother with this as a ranking factor, and putting in meta keywords could also give your competition an idea of what keywords you are going after, essentially showing your cards in a poker game.
If you're looking for a great beginner resource, check out Moz's Beginner's Guide to SEO. It's loaded with tips and articles to help you get off to a great start and focus on items substantially more important than meta keywords! There are also other great guides and resources as well!
Hope this helps! Good luck to you!
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They used to be used quite heavily. Nowadays majority of the major search engines don't use them at all. The only one I believe still does is Yandex, of which it's a minor signal then.
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