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
-
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 -
Stumped: Site No Longer Showing Up for Important Keywords
URL is: www.radianceofpalmbeach.comGreetings All:I have been working on our company's website for months, and I am finally at wit's end. The site was very out-of-date and had unfortunately been built upon some bad links before my arrival. My partner and I have redone the site with SEO best practices in mind: we created new content for the pages, and have been working diligently on correctly organizing the site. Despite everything we have done, our site has plummeted since September in terms of organic search. Here are some of my suspects: Panda/Penguin: a lot of the content of the old site had been copied. We did our best to make our content helpful and original, but I'm not sure we did enough. Also, many backlinks were suspect. I disavowed all that I didn't like Dec. 8. I have seen minor improvement, but not much. Name Change: Around late October, coinciding with one of the algorithm changes, the doctor insisted we change our name from New Radiance Med Spa to New Radiance Cosmetic Center. We noticed overnight tumbling, but it literally happened at the same time many were complaining about Penguin. Pages too far removed from root directory?: We tried to silo the site by category to make it specific, but I'm not sure if we went too far from the root directory. For example, our botox page is: http://www.radianceofpalmbeach.com/services/injectables/neuromodulators/botox-cosmetic/ -- Should it just be ./botox ? Everything is only one link away, so we didn't foresee a problem. No alternate forms of navigation: Our navigation is solely drop-down. Content Issues: Since the site launch, my boss has changed the organization of the site around. I don't think this should be a problem, but I honestly don't know. Technical Issues: We use a Wordpress site, and the designer has been pretty good about making the site clean and without errors, but perhaps there is something I am overlooking? ??: Despite these issues, I feel like our site should be considered better than many of our competitors who nonetheless perform much better than we do on important keyword searches. Type in "liposuction palm beach" or "botox palm beach" and we don't even come on page 1, whereas we used to dominate. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as, like I said, we are stumped. I feel like I have looked up every possible problem, and with the above list, we feel frozen as to which direction to turn.Thanks in advance,Michael
On-Page Optimization | | mikedelseo0 -
Is it better to target fewer keyword terms more often throughout a site or more keyword terms less often?
For example we have 5 different briefcases styles on our site with 5 different colors each. Is it better to have them all target the same keyword term: ie. Men's Leather Briefcase Bag - Examiner No. 5 Black Leather | Ghurka Men's Leather Briefcase Bag - Examiner No. 5 Brown Leather | Ghurka Men's Leather Briefcase Bag - Examiner No. 5 Tan Leather | Ghurka Men's Leather Briefcase Bag - Examiner No. 5 Black Twill | Ghurka Men's Leather Briefcase Bag - Examiner No. 5 Navy Twill | Ghurka etc. OR Men's Leather Briefcase Bag - Examiner Leather Bag for Men | Ghurka Leather Men's Briefcase Bag - Examiner Leather Bag for Men | Ghurka Leather Handmade Briefcase - Examiner Leather Bag for Men | Ghurka Men's Designer Business Bag - Examiner Leather Bag for Men | Ghurka Leather Men's Laptop Bag - Examiner Leather Bag for Men | Ghurka Advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Taylor
On-Page Optimization | | Ghurka0 -
Different Categories, Same Meta Description?
I've heard that having duplicate meta descriptions is bad for SEO and can even be the cause of penalties. However, a duplicate meta description would make sense for different categories on many sites. So I'm wondering what the best solution is for a case like this? One of my sites has around 150 topics, and each topic page is exactly the same, aside from including only things that are related to that specific topic. So why would I want to create 150 different meta descriptions? Not only is it time consuming, and nearly impossible to create 150 unique descriptions for the same type of content, but it also serves no purpose for visitors coming from the search engines. A logical approach would be to use the same meta description and just switch out the topics in the description... but then all of those descriptions would be 95% the same - and I imagine Google might see that as spam. So... suggestions?
On-Page Optimization | | JABacchetta0 -
Can you expound why i have to avoid using meta keywords?
I'm using the on page report card and it tells me that i have to avoid using meta keywords.I'm a little bit confused. I thought that it's important to use it all the time so search engine can better index the site. if I use SEO Quake it will tell me in the diagnostic test that I need to input keywords.
On-Page Optimization | | jsevilla0 -
Downloading Meta Data
I'm about to do a site audit, and as part of it I need to download all the metadata so that I can see what is ok, and what needs to change. I've seen tools that allow you to do this a million times, and even used a few. But today for some reason I'm drawing a blank. Can someone help me please? Best case scenario, the tool is free, but I'm not opposed to paying if it's going to save me a lot of time.
On-Page Optimization | | ZephSnapp0 -
Home Page Keyword Retargeting
Hi Guys! I have a question regarding the risk of **re-targeting **your homepage to another **keyword. ** To give a little background: I am working on a clients site that targets a keyword we initially thought during the keyword research phase, would be an appropriate target. What we found out is that it is not. Everything in analytics points to this keyword not performing well. We now want to re target the homepage to another keyword target. My questions are: How risky is it to do this given we have already done a fair amount of link building to the home page with anchor text from the initial keyword target? Will this look suspicious to google? What sort of things should we consider before moving forward with this change?
On-Page Optimization | | gravityseo0 -
Research on what improves CTR on meta data?
Does anyone know of any research done to show what improves CTR for title tags & descriptions in search results? I know general best practices, but am looking for any available studies
On-Page Optimization | | nicole.healthline0