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.
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
-
Old DMOZ description showing up in SERP meta description.
I have a client whose home page meta description on the SERPs is not matching the description n the meta data. The SERP description is from an old DMOZ description. Any idea about the best way to update this?
On-Page Optimization | | bdcseo0 -
Homepage and keywords
hello, another problem i am facing is that if i see in my rankings over 90% of keywords are connected with my home page. When i go to moz pro in Page Optimization Score wanting to optimize the page to rank better there are some propositions the issue is that it is impossible to have over 100 keywords in home page title to optimize it better for each one of these. I have more specific build more specific sites for many of these keywords in the site but google continues to rank all those keywords for the home page and not for the more specific page that could also be optimized for every keyword it deals with. In adition the question i posted in moz with url: https://moz.com/community/q/greek-language-distinctiveness is also mainly connected with above issue. Please help thanks
On-Page Optimization | | anavasis0 -
Getting Duplicate meta title, and meta description errors
I have a website with shopify CMS. At the run time some pages generating itself with Tags name ( or we can say it search pages) which has been used in collections. so it's Meta tag and description is same as well as collection and in SEO tools it showing duplicate meta title, description errors. 1. http://brok3nclothing.com/collections/tanks/girls-skate-clothing
On-Page Optimization | | 1akal
2. http://brok3nclothing.com/collections/accessories/girls-skate-clothing
3. http://brok3nclothing.com/collections/accessories/girls-skate-clothing
4. http://brok3nclothing.com/collections/tanks/girls-surf-clothing For example above URLs are not on website, its generating by self with tags name like girls-skate-clothing, girls-surf-clothing etc. and these pages are accessing Meta titles, description from http://brok3nclothing.com/collections/tanks/ So will you please suggest me that should I worry about these duplicate meta title, description errors ???0 -
Wordpress Duplicate Meta Title Issue
Hi, Google webmasters tools is reporting that I have 254 blog pages with duplicate metta titles. Sample below; /blog/2012/06/
On-Page Optimization | | UnderMe
/blog/2012/07/
/blog/2012/08/
/blog/2012/10/
/blog/2012/12/
/blog/2013/01/
/blog/
/blog/?s=boxer
/blog/?s=briefs
/blog/?s=cufflinks
/blog/category/swimwear/
/blog/category/uncategorized/ Can anyone advise what is the best way to address this issue as wordpress seems to assign the site title and tag line set in general settings as the meta title for all blog posts and pages. Thanks0 -
Problem with Occurrences of Keyword
At "On-Page Report " i have noticed that the only important problem my site has is the "Occurrences of Keyword " it says that i have ONLY 14.156 keyword repeat. My page ofcourse does not have so many repeats of same keyword. In fact this keyword is shown 10 times as i saw at source code of this page i tested. This report is for one page or for all pages of domain ? My keyword was two words keyword if that matters but there is no way that keywords to be repeated so many times.
On-Page Optimization | | Web-Builders0 -
Meta Keywords, Should I just remove them?
howdy guys, I am helping my father out with his SEO for his company. I am taking over the SEO helm so to speak and have to do a complete on site make over( offsite as well eventually soon) He has on every page meta keywords that are just stuffed with "money keywords" and they are the same on every page, Should i just delete them entirely and leave that attribute blank? Hope to hear back soon, thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | david3050 -
Are missing Meta Tags a big deal on a blog?
I show 272 missing Meta Description Tags after the crawl completed on my website. Pretty much all of those are from my website hosted wordpress blog. Should I be concerned about this?
On-Page Optimization | | webestate0 -
Title Keyword Question
I'm writing up keywords for new pages on a website. There are a number of variations on the way we can say what we're looking for, and I don't want to post the specific keywords but I'll give an example using fruits. Let's say I want to optimize for Granny Smith apples, McIntosh apples, Jonathan apples, etc. Could my title be Apples - Granny Smith, McIntosh, Jonathan and my page will come up when someone searchs "Granny Smith apples" or "McIntosh apples" etc. or do the words have to be repeated in order. Obviously I will also be repeating these in the description and on the page I'm optimizing. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | crlana0