To Use Meta Keywords Or Not to Use?
Many of you may know that I am one of those people who struggle with getting my pages to rank. I have asked many questions and have done much research to really try to know and understand exactly how to use keywords to help my ranking.
I have learned and been told to use low competition keywords (low hanging fruit) and long-tail phrase keywords; place keywords in your title, heading, in the first paragraph, within the first 200 words of your content, in the SEO meta-title, meta-description and meta-keyword field.
The other day I came across some training by a long-time member of WA and has a successful career as an online marketer. I thought the training was outstanding. But, one of the things that stood out to me, was that he was advocating not to put keywords in the SEO meta-keyword field. His reason was because "They don't do any good. Google does not use them for ranking." This of course, is contrary to what we are taught to do here at WA.
Today, I came across an article from Yoast.com, "Meta Tags: Why I Don't Use Them".
https://yoast.com/meta-keywords/
This article further supports not using meta keywords, because they don't do any good. Yoast backed up the reasoning for not using them with an official statement by Google.
I researched the article from Google Webmaster Central Blog, "Google does not use the keywords meta tags in web ranking", dated September 21, 2009. You can find the article here:
https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/0...
According to the article Google has long since stopped using the meta keywords for ranking. Additionally, Yoast quoted Bing as saying:
“It was abused far too much and lost most of its cachet. But there’s no need to ignore the tag. Take advantage of all legitimate opportunities to score keyword credit, even when the payoff is relatively low.”
Basically, Bing supports the continued use of meta keywords even though they think the value of doing so is very low. However, Google saying they will not be used at all for ranking, would remove all "value" . Seems to me that Bing is putting value where Google is saying no value exist any longer with using the meta keywords.
Per Yoast, Yahoo no longer uses meta keywords either. However, they said that while they don't use them for ranking, Yahoo continues to index them.
After reading some of the comments at the end of the article, I see that there is still some difference in opinions of website owners. Some still want to continue using them because their clients insist that they use them, some continue because the habit is hard to break. There are some who continue to use them because Google may change algorithms again in the future and their sites will fall in the rankings because they stopped using the meta keywords. If Google should change their minds in the future, the sites will be protected because they already have the meta keywords in.
I will add that although Google is no longer using meta keywords and haven't since 2009, keywords used in the meta description will continue to help with the rankings.
Understand, that this is referring only to the met-keywords that are used in the keyword field in the SEO section, Preview Snippet. Keywords in the content should always be used. That brings me to another matter of opinion.
I personally, have used 3 to 4 keywords within my content; at least one keyword within the first paragraph and the other three keywords within the first 200 words of the article. I have recently found that I should also use a keyword in one or two headings (but at least the first heading).
It has been recommended to me by many, that I should only use one keyword (for each page/post) for all the places that are normally recommended to place keywords and then let Google do the rest. Well, that long-term WA'er that I referred to near the beginning of this blog, uses many throughout his content! Again, this is another tip that is contrary to what we have been taught in the training lessons.
I very well understand how I (and many others can be confused). There are many different opinions and I'm told there are no hard and fast rules about keywords.
So you see why I'm straddling the fence here? I would love to know what you all think. Do you or do you not put keywords in the meta keyword field? Will you continue to use the meta keywords in the future? Do you use only one keyword in your content? Do you use more than one keyword? Wold you consider using more than one keyword in your content; several keywords?
I believe this may give many of us some food for thought!
Let me know how you think.
Verna
Recent Comments
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Thanks for the research you did for this article, lots of good info. I was wondering this very thing and your article came up when I was searching for help answering the question, thanks for the help.
Hi Verna,
I'm using a service called Ranking Coach to improve the rank of my brother's website. Ranking Coach walks the user through steps to improve the rank of a website and it had me remove all the meta-keywords.
I thought this was odd until I read your article.
All the best,
Gary
Gary, I continue to use the meta-keywords because I got used to using them and it is no trouble to just add them. Like some of the other folks, I believe that Google is too fickle with their algorithms, so I'm keeping mine just in case Google does a switcher roo! Keeping my bases covered.
Even if I wasn't going to use it anymore I wouldn't take the time to go back and remove them because as far as I can understand it doesn't hurt anything.
I have worried about using Meta keywords also. Most of the time I do not use them and have never noticed that using them has helped. I get worried that I am not doing things correctly. I am glad you have brought this up. Thanks
Thanks Laurie. People have a differing of opinions about using them. I actually still use them because I'm just used to doing it now and it doesn't take any time to add them in.
Some themes come without the boxes for meta keywords. Some allow you to deactivate it. This tells you about their importance. As I remember Kyle was also saying that they are not needed, so this is not contrary to what we have learned at WA, you might correct your sentence in the blog above. In fact Kyle was suggesting not to do anything related to meta title, meta description and meta keywords.
I have never used them and do not plan to use them.
Yes a post is always based on a single featured keywords as required by SEO. But you should use many other variant keywords and phrases where possible and necessary, to make the text rich.
Thanks Jovo. I will have to double check myself on that training and will make correction as needed. I appreciate your input.
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I am very much the same on this point! I got used to using the and honestly it was just part of my routine when making sure that my post was ready. Thank you for researching this! It is much appreciated :)
Hi Veronica,
I decided to stick with using only one keyword, but I still place my keyword in the SEO meta-keword section. That's just in case Google decides to even revert back to using it.
Thanks for you comments.
I use one "low hanging fruit" word and then there are usually others that aren't as high ranked but go with the content. I look up the low hanging word and then check, after writing, to see if there are other possibilities.
Good job!