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.
-
"Bing looks at meta keywords as a spam signal and not a ranking signal."
That's something I hand't heard before. Great.
I haven't been inserting keywords for a long time, after hearing that they were no help for SEO. However, in the beginning we were using them on some pages. We have several hundred pages on our WordPress site. I guess I will have to go look for a plugin to remove them. Can anyone recommend one for that purpose? We're built on Thesis (I'm sorry to say, now) which doesn't play well with a lot of the mainstream SEO plugins like the one from Yoast.
Thanks,
- Tim
-
It's unlikely that your keywords will give away some huge secret, but at the very least it will make the job a tad easier on your competitors. And because the tag has zero benefit, why would you want to even give a small advantage to your competitors?
-
I don't buy the - "it gives competitors what you are trying to rank for" arguement. Hell, all you have to do is go to a page title or look around a bit on some text and it should be glaringly obviously what they are trying to rank for.
.02
-
Google doesn't support meta keywords. Bing looks at meta keywords as a spam signal and not a ranking signal.
So there really isn't any reason to use them.
Read the full article about Bing and Meta Keywords here: http://searchengineland.com/the-meta-keywords-tag-lives-at-bing-why-only-spammers-should-use-it-96874
-
Search Engines do not use meta-keywords for ranking.................
I would never use all the keywords you are targeting in that meta it makes less work for you competition to outrank you
-
Search engines stopped using the keywords tag a long time ago, presumably because it was being abused by just about every single webmaster in the world.
So, if you still use it, you're getting zero SEO benefit plus you're saying to your competitors "Hey guys, here are the keywords that I'm trying to rank for. I just thought I'd let you know in case you want to compete with me for those ranking spots." Not a good idea.
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
-
Exact keyword match for meta title and h1 what is best practice?
How exact should my meta titles and H1 one be compare to the keyword you wish to rank on. Eksample. When I do a research with google AdWords the keyword tool shows me: 260 monthly searches for house for rent Hua Hin 140 monthly searches for Hua Hin house for rent 70 monthly searches for House for rent in Hua Hin The first two includes the exact same 5 words while the last one includes the stopword "in". That google have different search volumens for these very smilair search queries tells me that small differences matters. So how does that effect the way i shoulf write my: a)meta titles b)H1 I feel I get better sentences often by reordering the keywords etc. “Top tips on how to rent house in Hua Hin” Instead of “Top tips if you want a house for rent in Hua Hin” Do you use stop words like “in” hua hin. (only used in 25% of the searches queries)? Also would it matter if i write a plural form of a keyword instead of a singular etc propeties and sted of property? My goal is to write easy to read and unique content but i feel i can make exact matches if required with out compromising to much.
On-Page Optimization | | nm19770 -
On-page Optimisation for Keywords That Are Not Natural Language
I would like to know your thoughts on optimising a page for a keyword phrase that is not how you would normally write it. When someone searches they tend to use the (no pun intended) key words relating to their query rather than natural language. Using these keywords leads to copy that doesn't read well but not doing so gets you a poor mark on On-page graders like Moz. My clients target an international market but are region specific so, for example, I might want to optimise for 'safari lodge zambia' or variations of that. Alternatively it might be optimising for a specific tour so the keyword might include a region highlight and the 'safari' or 'tour' qualifier which again can sometimes be problematic. In the title, I would normally use the name of the tour | company name but that may not match an exact likely keyword search and in the main copy/description it would be unnatural to incorporate the keyword phrase.
On-Page Optimization | | intergise0 -
Can I target one keyword with 2~3 pages?
Since my website is targeting a very specific field, there are not many widely searched keywords. So I'm thinking of targeting one keyword with 2~3 pages. 1. I've read Neil Patel's blog post on how to create dual rankings to make your search listings stand out on Google. So I assume it's okay to target one keyword with several pages. (http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/07/30/4-steps-to-making-your-search-listings-stand-out-on-google/ Step #2 Create Dual Rankings) 2. But I've also read things on Keyword Cannibalism saying that if you target one keyword with several pages, they will compete with each other, and Google will get confused. I'm wondering, is it okay to target one keyword with 2~3 pages? And is there any smart way to do it ? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | joony0 -
Keywords to optimize
In the menu there's an item with a submenu with 4 items (pages) and another item with a submenu with almost the same pages with a litle bit different content. The problem is that one keyword can be applied and must be applied to the similar pages (the topic is very similar). I guess the number of keywords that we optimize is also important too. Optimizing minimun 8 keywords seems to me very hard. I' was told to optimize for a very low number of keywords but then we have the problem of redundancy. What should I do? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Are Meta-keywords coming back?
I'm currently doing some benchmarking for a big realtor site here in México, while looking at the biggest players in the US I noticed most if not all are using the Keywords meta tag in their detail listings. I've been really open to my client about not using this tag at all given the current common knowledge but when sites like: Trulia.com, Realtor.com, appartments.com and the like, are using them I'm second guessing their utility. Does anyone have any insights on this? Should or should not we use meta-keywords? On a side note, there is some interesting microdata going on, in those sites.
On-Page Optimization | | makote1 -
What are your thoughts on keyword density?
Useless metric? Good as an indicator, but not of any real value? Best way to judge how well content is optimised? I've heard all kinds of opinions, what's yours? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | underscorelive0 -
Can Sitemap Be Used to Manage Canonical URLs?
We have a duplicate content challenge that likely has contributed to us loosing SERPs especially for generic keywords such as "audiobook," "audiobooks," "audio book," and "audio books." Our duplicate content is on two levels. 1. The first level is at our web store, www.audiobooksonline.com. Audiobooks are sometimes published in abridged, unabridged, on compact discs, on MP3 CD by the same publisher. In this case we use the publisher description of the story for each "flavor" = duplicate content. Can we use our sitemap to identify only one "flavor" so that a spider doesn't index the others? 2. The second level is that most online merchants of the same publisher's audio book use the same description of the story = lots of duplicate content on the Web. In that we have 11,000+ audio book titles offered at our Web store, I expect Google sees us as having lots of duplicated (on the Web) content and devalues our site. Some of our competitors who rank very high for our generic keywords use the same publisher's description. Any suggestions on how we could make our individual audio book title pages unique will be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | lbohen0 -
Wordpress when to use posts or pages
Hi Guys, I have a network of EMD sites that currently use a homepage and then we have a blog page which has 5-6 posts on. Is this the best way to do it with sites under 10-20 pages? Or should we create say 3-4 new pages/categories and drop the posts relevant to each page/category in there? Thank you Jon
On-Page Optimization | | imrubbish0