Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Meta Keywords: Should we use them or not?
-
I am working through our site and see that meta keywords are being used heavily and unnecessarily. Each of our info pages will have 2 or 3 keyword phrases built into them. Should we just duplicate the keyword phrases into the meta keyword field, should put in additional keywords beyond or not use it at all?
Thoughts and opinions appreciated
-
Matt Cutts has gone on record as saying they don't use the meta keywords tag. Check out the video.
-
As stated by Donnie and William search engines don't use meta keywords as a ranking factor, so it is not recommended to use them. I would just like to confirm the fact that it will give your competitors an easy way to figure out which keyword phrases you're trying to rank for.
Best of luck with your efforts.
-
William is right meta keywords is essentially a worthless tag that is no longer used by most search engines, as it was a method abused by spammers in the past (in the days of the meta crawler when you could type any term in and still be served porn). Bing still takes them into account as a signal for spammers not ranking!
I always look at competitors meta-data in order to give me a quick overview of their targetted terms, so I would think about ditching them if I were you, though don't panic if you don't., just don't give precious time to them..
-
Actually Google does not mention anything about meta keywords only that they do not use this as a ranking factor. Bing however looks at this as an attempt to manipulate their SERPs. Also, using meta keywords will give your competitors a free link research goto for your site. I would not recommend using them.
-
Meta keywords are no longer being used by most search engines, especially Google. I suggest removing all meta keyword data because the only thing it does is it allows competitors to see what keywords you are trying to target.
Most popular search engines don't use this to rank anymore, and it is best to not do this.
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
-
Is it ok to repeat a (focus) keyword used on a previous page, on a new page?
I am cataloguing the pages on our website in terms of which focus keyword has been used with the page. I've noticed that some pages repeated the same keyword / term. I've heard that it's not really good practice, as it's like telling google conflicting information, as the pages with the same keywords will be competing against each other. Is this correct information? If so, is the alternative to use various long-winded keywords instead? If not, meaning it's ok to repeat the keyword on different pages, is there a maximum recommended number of times that we want to repeat the word? Still new-ish to SEO, so any help is much appreciated! V.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vitzz1 -
Keyword difficulty and time to rank
Hello, Is there a correlation between the keyword difficult and the time it takes to rank ? In other words let's say I try to rank for the keyword "seo" and it is going to take 2 years to rank 1 st whereas if I go for "best seo tools in 2018" and it takes just 2 weeks ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Wrong meta descriptions showing in the SERPS
We recently launched a new site on https, and I'm seeing a few errors in the SERPS with our meta descriptions as our pages are starting to get indexed. We have the correct meta data in our code but it's being output in Google differently. Example: http://imgur.com/ybqxmqg Is this just a glitch on Google's side or is there an obvious issue anyone sees that I'm missing? Thanks guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brian_Owens_10 -
Should I use change of address when moving to subdomain
Hi guys So we had a domain that was only for one country, www.example.com 1 year later we decided to go to another country so we will have all the current website under a country subdomain like : ae.example.com we did a 301 redirect
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | awrikat
Should I perform a change of address action from www.example.com to ae.example.com ? please help
Thanks0 -
Advanced SEO - What would you do after you run out of keywords?
Hello! Our company has been growing in terms of traffic and ranking well for a couple of years but we are now kind of stagnating because we just don't know what to do next. We have a good blog - and with our blogs, we have been targeting all major keywords with their related keywords as a bucket. - "keyword theme / page" for a long time. But it seems we now don't have any major keyword theme to write about. What is worse is that we don't see any traffic growth since 2014 September. (although we added many good blogs) So what would do you when you run out of keywords? or keyword themes? Would you just keep pumping in more blogs and hope that you get more clicks? or at some point, you just don't care about keywords and write whatever relevant to your site? Wouldn't it hurt our site if we create similar keyword themed pages? (like regurgitating our keywords?) or even same keyword targeting pages? You must have similar experience if you are an owner of a niche site. Can you please share your experience with this kind of headaches? Thank you and look forward to your comments.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joony3 -
Will the use of lightbox affect SEO?
I am looking to condense a features list on my pricing page. it is currently a static list however I want the user to click a button and a full list of standard features will pop up in a lightbox. How will this affect my SEO? Can Google read content in a lightbox?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ParkerSoftware0 -
Pagination duplicate title and meta description
Hello, Getting a lot of duplicate title and meta description errors via google webmaster tools. For best SEO practices, do i no-index the page/2's, page/3's...? More importantly, i see how MOZ did it by adding "page 3" to their titles such as http://moz.com/blog?page=3. Is that a better way of doing it? If so, how do i do that on Yoast SEO? Thank you so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Is it better to use geo-targeted keywords or add the locations as separate keywords?
For example... state keyword (nyc real estate) or keyword, state (nyc, real estate) = 2 keywords Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cyclone0