Meta tag keywords with the same words in them.
-
I'm updating some older pages and was wondering about potential penalties from having keywords that start with the same phrase. It's a geographic area so there is the "full name" and the abbreviated name. I'd like to have keywords for both.
For example:
virginia beach, va beach, virginia beach attraction, virginia beach things to do, va beach attraction, va beach things to do, virginia beach dolphins tour, va beach dolphins tour
Is that spammy? I understand they don't have the same weight as they used to but I'd like to optimize for them anyway since I'm redoing some things.
Thanks in advance.
-
Thanks everyone. I really appreciate the time and effort each of you spent helping a newbie. I will stop using them completely.
-
Forgive me, I'm a little confused by your post title. To be clear, are you referring to <meta name="keywords" ...>which would contain a list of all of the keyword referenced within the page?</meta name="keywords" ...>
- If you are, you should know that Google drove a stake through the heart of that abomination years ago. Yahoo and Bing weren't paying much attention (if any) to these as of a few years ago, so this practice can be safely abandoned.
Meta Title and Meta Description are of value to users and a correctly titled page will give you some SEO benefit, so use these in accordance with these guidelines:
https://mza.seotoolninja.com/learn/seo/title-tag
https://mza.seotoolninja.com/learn/seo/meta-description
If you are simply referring to the keywords within the body of your page, I recommend treating your copy as though it were conversation with a prospective customer; if you keep endlessly repeating the same thing in slightly different ways they're going to ignore you at first and then, if you persist, actively avoid you. So what you need to say without trying to say the same thing a thousand different ways; it's a huge turn off for visitors and Google will not reward you for it. That's not to say you can't repeat the phrase a couple of times throughout the copy, with a few slight variations on a theme, but don't labour the point. Read your copy out loud - if you start to annoy yourself (or others) you know you've overdone it. Less is more.
And give Google credit; it's smart. There really is no need to endlessly feed it every variant going. Google have invested huge sums of money in getting smarter and semantic search (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-101-semantic-search-care/119760/) is a big part of that. I'd drop VA altogether (apart from the odd mention in a page or two - if it justified it because it added clarity and stick with 'Virginia Beach', building the main thrust/theme the site (or section of the site) around that, with separate pages for each specific activity or article focus 'dolphin tour' etc. Google will work it out without the need for you to shout at them.
Keep the end user at the forefront of your thinking when you're building your site, answer their questions, scratch their itches, and you'll be rewarded.
Use your keywords appropriately not repetitively, regardless of the context.
Good luck!
Note to self: I must write quicker replies, two other people answered this while I was writing this!
-
Hello Stephen,
A few years ago Matt Cutts said that google does not take into acount the meta keywords tag.
Here the youtube video: Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web rankingI have no information about being penalized for using that tag with keywords like that.
Honestly, very few sites uses them. And some SEOs consider that there is no risk other than your competitor knowing what your keywords are.Best Luck.
GR -
It's not that they don't have the same weight - they have no weight, Stephen. Don't waste your time on them.
(In fact, you'll just be making it even easier for your competition to grab lists of the keywords you're targeting.)
Paul
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
-
Ranking keywords
Is there a way to utilize our currently ranking keywords. I don't think editing the url would be a good idea. What areas of these pages should we improve? Or is it better not to do anything.
On-Page Optimization | | Timberwink0 -
Meta tags not being displayed for Mobile version of a blog even after the blog is indexed
I have updated the meta title and meta description for my blog. After updating the meta tags, blog URL was submitted in the webmasters and it has been crawled and indexed by Google but only for the desktop version and not for mobile version. Currently, meta tags are not being displayed for mobile version in Google. I have also checked with robots.txt file, there is no problem with this file. PFA screenshots for reference. Kindly help me out with this issue. eWu1k8N PdimKGq
On-Page Optimization | | priyankadesai1230 -
How unique should a meta description be?
I'm working on a large website (circa 25k pages) that presently just replicates each page title as a meta description. I'm thinking of doing a 'find and replace' in the database so I change: to where the preceeding and following text would be the same in each case eg Is this unique enough? Obviously the individual keyword would make it technically unique each time....and manually changing them would take the rest of my life 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | abisti21 -
Keywords on Title Tag and Meta Description?
I have question regarding the use of keywords on title tag and meta description. I will take my website as example... Title Tag: Web Design Company & Digital Marketing Agency in Jakarta Meta Description: Coriate is a full-service website design & Internet marketing firm in Indonesia. We offer the best web solutions and SEO service in the industry. My questions: Is it good? Because I followed Blue Fountain Media. They don't use same keyword on title tag and meta description. You can see on title tag I use "web design" while on meta description I use "website design". Or should I use "web design" on meta description too? Blue Fountain Media doesn't use their company name on title tag. But when I search "Blue Fountain Media" on Google, it only showed their company name. How? Their title tag was "Website Design Company & Digital Marketing Agency in NYC | BFM". Is it necessary to use H1? Because as you can see on my company website Coriate there's no H1.
On-Page Optimization | | Japracool0 -
Keyword canibalization
Hi all, as part of the optimization process i've used the same keyword in two different pages of my site (the "home" page and another page") 'cause I had only four criteria (keywords) selected for my business model and six pages so I had to redistributed it in diferent pages. This keyowrd especifically is suited for two pages of the website. The thing is that it could result in keyword canibalization as two pages are competing for the same keyword and may Google penalize the site. ¿How could I solve the problem? I can use only these four criteria according the the business model of the company. In case the pages are indexed and something has been changed how must i proceed? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Avoid Keyword Stuffing in Document
Hello is there some way to avoid this? <dl> <dt>Occurrences of Keyword</dt> <dd>45</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>We've seen evidence that excessive use of keywords can negatively impact rankings and thus suggest moderation.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Remove instances of the targeted keyword(s) from the document text of this page to bring it below 15</dd> <dd>I don't want to get slapped by the big G, bing, yahoo, ask, aol, etc. I currently show 2 posts on my main webpage.
On-Page Optimization | | 678648631264
</dd> </dl>0 -
Title tags in duplicate pages
hi there, we have a new ecommerce platform which has just been deployed, and I've been asked to tidy up the onpage SEO. we have employed canonicals across the category and product pages and we now have a nice set of unique product pages my question is - do we need to create the title tags in all of the duplicate non-canonical pages eg www.mysite.com/niceproduct.html (canonical) www.mysite.com/acategory/niceproduct.html (duplicate) Can we leave the duplicate title tag empty and not worry about it, or should we put in a duplicate of the canonical title tag hope the question makes sense! thanks in advance for all help
On-Page Optimization | | k3nn3dy30 -
Duplicate Page Titles and Keywords
Still new to this SEO world, so please bear with me. I have an eCommerce site so one of the issues is duplicate content and page titles. So what I was thinking was this...for each product that I sell I have 4 or 5 keywords that I have targeted. For example for personalized iPhone cases I have decided on: iphone 4 case personalized, monogrammed iphone 4 case, personalized and monogrammed iphone case, preppy phone case, personalized iPhone case, monogrammed iPhone case For each of my products I was going to a product description (ie: trendy color block diagonal stripes) and a targeted keyword. But I was going to rotate the keywords through so as to try to avoid the duplicate page title issue. Will that help? Thanks much, Shara
On-Page Optimization | | Confections0