Meta Keywords
-
Hello Everyone-
Quick question about meta keywords. Most SEO's agree that meta keywords are no longer used as a ranking factor in Google.
My question is, if a client comes to me and they already have a bunch of meta keywords on their site what would the smart strategy be?
1. Remove all the meta keyword data from the clients site
2. Scale the meta keywords back by only leaving the top keywords in the code?
3. Do nothing
Thanks for all your time!
Regards,
Bill Parlaman
-
Google + Bing + Yahoo + Ask = over 98% of search engine traffic in the US. What the other search engines do is irrelevant in my opinion. I am not aware of any search engine which uses meta keywords.
As far as search engines changing their minds, it is entirely possible but highly unlikely. Meta keywords go directly against everything Google has worked towards...showing the same content to the public as to the search engine. The public does not see the meta keywords tag.
This is a very minor detail, and you can go either way. Since you brought the topic up, I will stand by my original recommendation that this unnecessary code be removed from the site.
-
Google is clear they absolutely do not use meta keywords (see Matt Cutts video). If the keywords are spammy and useless, I'd clean it up. If the keywords are valid, I might consider removing them to make it harder on new competitors to figure out what this site owner thinks are valuable. End of the day, I agree that you could simply do nothing, but I tend to clean up and/or delete.
-
I would leave them because search engines change their mind on many things.
-
Ugh...double posted...and it won't let me delete.
-
I would agree with EGOL and just leave them there and do nothing. While I don't go to the trouble of adding new keywords to my site, I don't bother removing them if they are there. I can't see that they are doing any harm.
However, there is something in my head that remembers reading that some search engines still use meta keywords...is this true?
-
I would recommend option 1. Remove the meta keyword tag from the site, while following EGOL's advice of including your client in the loop.
Those words offer ZERO value. You and I both know that. It is a best practice of coding, and I would suggest good SEO, to remove unnecessary code. This is especially important when that code appears on every page of the site.
I would be less worried about competitors trying to see what words you are targeting. Any good SEO will know those words have no effect, and they will also be able to look at the page itself, or click a button on a page tool, to understand what key words you are targeting.
-
I would be inclined to do #3. Nothing.
That option requires no work and you will not need to worry about client seeing that they are removed and coming to you with concerns.
If you are inclined to do #1 then I would mention it to client before they are removed. Possible reasons to remove might be to reduce the amount of code on the page and some people think that meta keywords can be used by competitors to see what rankings you are thinking about.
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
-
Google cuts meta title after 60 characters and meta description after 130 characters. Is this new?
Hey community, We noticed, that our meta's are cutted after much lesser characters then it used to. Mainly after 130-135. Did i miss something? Should we basically consider to write meta's constantly with lesser then 130 characters instead of the advised 160 characters? Cheers, Boris
On-Page Optimization | | posthumus0 -
Anyone knows why our meta deta are not displayed properly ?
Hello For some reasons our home description does not appear properly https://www.google.com/search?q=joomgeek&qscrl=1&gws_rd=ssl it looks like this http://awesomescreenshot.com/05c3n5fg65 I've resubmit my sitemap to G webmaster Tools and it still the same. However when I bing it I see the proper one. What can be wrong ?
On-Page Optimization | | JoomGeek0 -
Meta Refresh
Hi, This forum has proved to be quite active and useful for me. Can any body help me about "Meta Refresh" that Moz weekly report shows as error. My site is not that which needs daily basis or say hourly basis update. We change the content but not daily. Should i address this issue or just ignore it. what impact does it may have if i ignore it. Thanks, Tanveer
On-Page Optimization | | Sequelmed0 -
Selling Products with a similar meta description
Wondering if anyone can help when selling similar products with very similar meta description and product descriptions in general. Have around 500 products - a lot of products have around 10-20 products which are very similar only different is sizes and a maybe a few lines of text if that. Is this a problem in search engines? How does other ecommerce stores selling similar products solve this problem...
On-Page Optimization | | royRR0 -
What are the benefits of the URL meta tag?
We have too many meta tags and want to get rid of all the outdated ones. However, we don't want to eliminate valuable meta tags by mistake. So, before we say goodbye to the URL meta tag, we want to make sure we understand the pros and cons, if any. By the way, we are not referring to canonical URL tags, just URL as in:
On-Page Optimization | | GRIP-SEO0 -
Duplicate lower and uppercase keywords
I get significantly different report cards for the same keywords with and without uppercase letters on the same URL. The only difference between the two sets of keywords is the first letters of every keywords, e.g.: "Air freight" - results in an "F"
On-Page Optimization | | DigiTeamatDSV
"air freigth" - results in an "A" Should I stick to lowercase keywords only - and won't the search engines ignore the case anyway?0 -
Keyword Density in Body in one page report.
Does anyone know how SEOMOZ look up the keyword frequency in one page report body part.. There are discrepancies between the keyword frequency in body text of SEOMOZ and other free check website.
On-Page Optimization | | RiseSEO0 -
Confused about meta tags.
(Ok, this might be a stupid question.) I am a little confused about the best practice for the Meta Tag. I know they don't have a real effect on ranking. But I am getting "mixed signals" as to their general use. I've pasted the 2 examples of below that are confusing me. From my Campaign's Crawl Diagnostics: (I have missing Meta Tags) "Meta description tags, while not important to search engine rankings, are extremely important in gaining user click-through from search engine result pages (SERPs). These short paragraphs are the webmaster's opportunity to advertise content to searchers and let them know exactly what the given page has with regard to what they're looking for" From The Keyword Optimization Tool: (Avoid Using Meta Keyword Tool) "Search engines have, for years, ignored the meta keywords tag as a ranking signal. Although it technically does not harm rankings, it can be used by competitors as a method to extract your targeted terms and thus, we recommend against its use. " I would love to hear opinions on this topic. I am trying to decide wether or not to use unique meta tags on every blog post.
On-Page Optimization | | NerdsOnCall0