Are Meta Keywords Still A Thing?
-
Hey all! First post on here, forgive me for being an SEO newb.
Are meta keywords still a thing? Here's why I ask, I read this article from back in 2009 that said they are absolutely not a ranking factor anymore: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html
However, in doing some research on our competition, I found that the top result for "Financial Advisor in Colorado Springs" was this company: http://www.strasbaughfinancial.com/
Honestly, the site seems to be doing everything opposite of what I read to do. It isn't even mobile responsive! With the Moz Bar, I found that no links pointing toward it. Not one video on the site (there is a link to a welcome video but the link is broken!!), no blog or regular content updates, no keywords in the H1 or H2 tags, page titles, etc. The website looks old and, frankly, terrible. Really I’m stumped how this can be ranking so high for so many competitive keywords.
Then I realized that they stuffed tons of keywords in the meta description and meta keywords. From what I can tell, this is the ONLY intentional SEO strategy they used. Am I missing something? Are meta keywords still a ranking factor and THAT important?
-
This is not important, you can read this:
http://www.wordstream.com/meta-keyword
The domain age is one of the best factors
-
Thanks so much!! This is very helpful.
-
If you want to know the real reason of why that page is the position 1 look at the backlinks of that page ( anchor text/quality of the links/quantity of the links )
Check the audit
4700 backlinks / 26 Referring IP / Domain Score 3
-
Meta keywords are not still a thing, at least in Google search!
So looking at Strasbaugh, and answering some comments you made:
- You're right, it's not mobile responsive - this can be a detriment, but it's not going to knock them off the first page in most cases just because of that. It's a small percentage of the overall factors
- Site design - I feel that I have pretty high standards, but I wouldn't call this "old and frankly, terrible" - I'd say it's decent for this industry. Keep in mind they're not trying to be a creative design agency website
- Domain age can be a helpful factor if it truly is old
- Unfortunately, the Moz bar isn't the best source to find a high volume of links (yet) - using Ahrefs I see 70 linking root domains, which is pretty decent for a local firm
- Video, H1, H2, blog/content updates - those can be signals but are not deal breakers if other factors exist
- Titles are important, but they're not totally bungling them. They at least have their core phrase "financial advisors" in there, although yes all the pages should have rewritten titles
- One thing that's likely helping is that its links have generally good anchor text. Mostly "Strasbaugh Financial Advisory" in the link anchor. This is something that I thought Google would have discounted more by now, but that's not the case, it's still a strong signal
- Lucky for you, if they're a competitor, is that in looking at their traffic on Ahrefs, they actually don't get a ton of it, it's only about 53 visits a month. The important thing to note is that your example keyword exactly as you phrase it "Financial Advisor in Colorado Springs" - gets 0 searches a month. The keyword "financial advisors colorado springs" gets 20 searches a month and they are ranked #4
- Looking a page like http://www.strasbaughfinancial.com/who-we-serve - they have decent helpful informaiton on there. It's not 10x or even 2x content by any means, but it's better than what I see on a lot of these local financial firm websites
Hopefully that helps! The good news is that if you think what they're doing is minimal, then you should be able to replicate and improve and then rank!
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 Increases Titles and Meta Descriptions Length
So, we now know that Google are changing the Title and Meta Desc length limits to 70 and 200 respectively. Does this mean we all need to jump to immediate attention and modify all our current pages OR, do we wait?
On-Page Optimization | | dynamyt1000 -
The Keyword density in a landing page is very low . by adding meta keyword tag can improve keyword density?
The Keyword density in a landing page is very low . by adding meta keyword tag can improve keyword density?
On-Page Optimization | | socialhi50 -
Would This Be Highlighted as Duplicate Meta Desc?
Due to the nature of our business we literally have hundreds of web pages and so we recently asked our Web Developers to create the Meta Description for many of the pages that they create - unfortunately they don't seem to understand SEO but before I go back to them I wanted to run this by the MOZ Community... Here is a snippet of the Meta Desc they have created, personally I'm not happy with it BUT I need to be certain on one thing... Will Google determine that it is (almost) duplicated Meta content? Why not visit Cape Town on an Africa Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book with us today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Casablanca on an Africa Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Durban on an Africa Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book with us today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Port Elizabeth on an Africa Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Aukland on an Australasia Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Christchurch on an Australasia Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Melbourne on an Australasia Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Sydney on an Australasia Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Orlando on a Caribbean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book with us today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Central America Cruise on a Cruise Destinations with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, benefits and special offers. Why not visit Acapulco on a Central America Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Puntarenas on a Central America Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Sharm El Sheik on an Egypt And Red Sea with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not take a European Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book with us today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive cruise club benefits. Why not visit Bangkok on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Halong Bay on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Hong Kong on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Kuala Lumpur on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Okinawa on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Phuket on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Shanghai on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Singapore on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Tokyo on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive benefits. Like I said earlier, there are hundreds of pages more! I think that if I want total uniqueness then it's going to be a laborious task of doing them all individually but I want to make sure that it is worth it?! Thanks Andy
On-Page Optimization | | TomKing0 -
Duplicate lower and uppercase keywords
I get significantly different report cards for the same keywords with and without uppercase letters on the same URL. The only difference between the two sets of keywords is the first letters of every keywords, e.g.: "Air freight" - results in an "F"
On-Page Optimization | | DigiTeamatDSV
"air freigth" - results in an "A" Should I stick to lowercase keywords only - and won't the search engines ignore the case anyway?0 -
To use or not to use: Keywords with locations
Hello there. I work for a marketing agency that manages SEO campaigns for a variety of small businesses in South Florida. Let's say we have a client that sells cheap shoes at their store location. Obviously, we want to show up in Google rankings for search terms like "cheap shoes south florida" or "cheap shoes miami." Now, my question is, when optimizing a website's content for various keywords, is it really necessary to include keywords with the location (which are often awkward for both reading and writing purposes)? Ideally, I'd prefer to have text that always reads as naturally as possible. Text like this is just an eyesore: Welcome to ExampleSite.com, home of the best cheap shoes Florida. We offer all kinds of cheap shoes Boca Raton. Your whole family doesn't have enough fingers and toes to count how many cheap shoes West Palm Beach we have in stock! Contact us to ask about our cheap shoes Miami discounts today! Olé!" What say you? Is there a way to work around ugly SEO text like this while still effectively ranking for GEO terms? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BBEXNinja0 -
Meta refresh - nojavascript url
seomox is telling me that I am getting a page that is not being indexed or crawled and since the crawl status code is 200 and there are no robots the meta-refresh url must be the problem. the meta refresh url is different than the on page report card url as it's the nojavascript url which my developer says should be ok. see his comments below. The is redirecting to http://mastermindtoys.com/store/nojavascript.html only in case if the JavaScript is disabled in the client browser. This is the right way to do it, I don’t understand why this might be a problem, otherwise MM has to implement Noscript pages that have a real content. I didn’t get what’s wrong about accessibility. The code 200 means it is accessible, and yes there is nothing to access if JavaScript is disabled on browser. I think there are no modern retail sites that would do any sensible business with the scripting disabled in browsers.The H1 is really present 2 times and second occurrence can be removed, though I highly doubt about importance of this change.Regarding duplicates – what URLs are considered duplicates? Can you please send me examples?I am not aware of canonical URL problem for MM site unless we consider old .asp links as duplicate links of the canonical product pages. I would appreciate if SEOMoz gave us an example what they mean.I suspect that the page is not getting indexed as a result of this or I'm just not getting a good score. Which is it?
On-Page Optimization | | mastermindtoys0 -
Best meta tite - description writing tool
Hi I am in the process of writing meta titles and meta descriptions for a clients product portfolio. I have the complete list exported from the cms system in to excel. I know I can add some clever logic to build the meta information but for this purpose I want to do this manually. Does anyone have a editor online or an excel sheet that shows you the charactor limits when writing the titles and descriptions. This would be handy if someone has, otherwise it's a case of having to write the excel sheet to do this, not that hard to do but i thought i'd ask the question.
On-Page Optimization | | seohive-2227200 -
Redirecting to a keyword-rich domain URL
It's best practice to choose a domain that has keyword in it. But if someone has just launched a website and the domain name does not have keyword, is it better to purchase a new domain name that has a keyword in the name and redirect existing domain to the new domain? Will that help SEO? (This just launched website does not have any traffic or links yet.)
On-Page Optimization | | Amjath0