Worth removing keywords...?
-
I was just going over a site I manage and noticed it had a load of meta keywords on it. Probably 10-15 keywords per page... Do you think this is harming the site? Is it worth removing them?
-
I read somewhere that the meta keywords did matter for some search engines still like Yahoo but not for Google. Not sure where I read it...maybe I am mistaken though.
-
Added to Davinias thoughts, it also is a quick way for competitors to find out what you are trying to rank for - it's the first thing I look for on a competitors website!
-
There is no SEO benefit in using meta keywords, however if you do use them and are keyword spamming (i.e. using more than 2-3 page specific terms) then you could be penalized.
I always recommend removing the tag completely from the website as it stops the client from spamming the tag at a later date and it reduces the amount of 'useless' code in the source code (Google likes a website that loads quickly!)
-
See that's what I thought... It's not the worlds biggest job to remove the keywords but just wondered on pro's and con's of doing it...
-
"As far as I know."
-
Whats AFAIK? (Sorry not down with the lingo!)
-
AFAIK, it's not harming the site because the search engines don't even look at the meta-keywords tag. Stuff it, leave it empty, whatever.
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
-
To remove or not remove a redirected page from index
We have a promotion landing page which earned some valuable inbound links. Now that the promotion is over, we have redirected this page to a current "evergreen" page. But in the search results page on Google, the original promotion landing page is still showing as a top result. When clicked, it properly redirects to the newer evergreen page. But, it's a bit problematic for the original promo page to show in the search results because the snippet mentions specifics of the promo which is no longer active. So, I'm wondering what would be the net impact of using the "removal request " tool for the original page in GSC. If we don't use that tool, what kind of timing might we expect before the original page drops out of the results in favor of the new redirected page? And if we do use the removal tool on the original page, will that negate what we are attempting to do by redirecting to the new page, with regard to preserving inbound link equity?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoelevated0 -
Topical keywords for product pages and blogs
Hi all, I have a question regarding keywords. Of course we all know that keyword research should be focused on a certain topic and on user intent (and thus on answering specific questions) instead of trying to put keywords in a page to make it rank. However, duplicate content is of course still an issue. So here's my question: A client that sells floor heating systems that you can install yourself, has a product page for this topic and blog pages for questions regarding this topic. So following pages are on the website: Product page about the floor heating systems the client sells Blog article with tips how to install a floor heating system yourself Blog article about how to choose the right floor heating system These pages all answer different questions and are written about different topics. However, inevatibly all these pages also talk about different aspects of floor heating systems so this broad term comes up on all pages naturally. You could say that a solution is to merge pages and redirect the blogs to the product page, so the product page would answer all questions. But that is not what a customer is looking for. The goal of a product page is to trigger a conversion: let a customer contact the company or ask for a price offer. If the content on a product page is not comprehensive enough, the goal gets lost. Moreover, it doesn't make sense to talk about tips and tricks on a product page. So how do you tackle this problem without creating duplicate content? In search results, the blog pages rank for the specific questions, but the product page doesn't rank for the generic term 'floor heating'. The internal link structure is ok: the product page has obviously more incoming links than the blogs. All on page SEO factors are taken care of as well. Any ideas on this? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
Keyword Ranking Fluctuations
Hi Guys I am currently working on a website where one of the keyword targets is fluctuating. The keyword is fluctuating between page 2 and page 5. What makes this strange is that we are not experiencing the issue with any other keyword targets. They are all ranking fine. It is only 1 keyword. The keyword target happens to be the main homepage keyword target - not sure if this makes a difference? The homepage targets 2 keyword e.g. Business Offices & Accessories. The homepage ranks perfectly fine for e.g. Business Accessories but is fluctuating for e.g. Business Offices! Very strange. What makes it even stranger - the keyword variations of the fluctuating keyword e.g. office for business - these variations are all fine and not fluctuating. Its only 1 keyword. If anyone has any ideas or feedback that would be great! Thanks, Duncan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Keyword in URL - SEO impact
Hi, We don't have most important keyword of our industry in our domain or sub-domain. How important it is to have keyword in website URL? Most of our competitors pages with "keyword" urls been listing in SERP. What is back-links role in this scenarion? And which URL have more advantage? keyword in sub-domain or page with keyword. Like for "seo" keyword..... seo.example.com or example.com/seo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Keyword Self Cannibalization and E-Commerce
I run a Magento shop - let's imagine a situation where the category landing page, is about "Joe Bloggs Kettles" Then on that page, we have the products listed ; so we would have links to products pages - these links will be called something like:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
Joe Bloggs Red Kettle
Joe Bloggs Yellow Kettle
Joe Bloggs Purple Kettle Can someone please tell me if this is ok or should we rework our strategy? Thanks0 -
Our login pages are being indexed by Google - How do you remove them?
Each of our login pages show up under different subdomains of our website. Currently these are accessible by Google which is a huge competitive advantage for our competitors looking for our client list. We've done a few things to try to rectify the problem: - No index/archive to each login page Robot.txt to all subdomains to block search engines gone into webmaster tools and added the subdomain of one of our bigger clients then requested to remove it from Google (This would be great to do for every subdomain but we have a LOT of clients and it would require tons of backend work to make this happen.) Other than the last option, is there something we can do that will remove subdomains from being viewed from search engines? We know the robots.txt are working since the message on search results say: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more." But we'd like the whole link to disappear.. Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | desmond.liang1 -
Understanding Google's keyword tool...
When I type in Google a keyword like : boot camp I get results that show Bootcamp (one word) traffic in the tens of thousands. I see many words combined. Does this mean that tens of thousands of people every month are misspelling that keyword? How should I interpret this in terms of anchor texting? I would hate to deliberately misspell it on my website just to get traffic. For those interested, my website is: http://ultimatebasictraining.com/admin/ (currently revaming my http://ultimatebasictraining.com website)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Remove www. in google webmaster
Hi. My baseball blog (mopupduty.com) shows up as www.mopupduty.com in Google Webmaster tools. This is an issue for me, as my Wordpress plug-in sitemap will only show up on http://mopupduty.com/sitemap.xml , not the www. version Is there any way in changing the www. in webmaster tools without deleting my existing index. The website currently has sitelinks in search results, and I'm not too keen in giving them up via deletion. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mkoster0