Why meta keywords

Even SEO tools like Yoast have discontinued their usage. You should too regardless of how you edit your metadata from the source code or by using any kind of tool avoid meta tags. To maximize click-through rates on search engines, you can instead focus on long-tail keyword research, use the target keywords wisely, and use title tags and meta descriptions. You should focus on creating relevant and unique content to improve user experience and get more conversions on your website.

Meta tags have no direct SEO value for your website. Get the SEO Checklist sent to your inbox. In order to guarantee that researchers reach credible results whenever they perform search queries, they had to give up on that ranking factor since websites were abusing it. Now, this is controversial. Many SEO experts suggest that you should not use them at all. Nevertheless, nineteen percent of websites still use meta keywords.

It comes naturally to ask why they are still using them if they do not count in the ranking. Therefore, some websites still prefer to use meta keywords to be on the safest side, because who knows about those algorithms anyway?

On the other hand, the remaining eighty-one percent are not convinced with this theory. If you wish to use meta keywords in your code, you should be careful about using them, in order not to be blacklisted by search engines. You definitely do not want that to happen. The first and most important condition is to avoid using high volume keywords which are irrelevant to your content, this will not get you anywhere and is considered as spam. This may be a bad signal for search engines. In addition, in reference to selecting keywords, the best tip is to include long tail keywords and common misspellings of your main topic.

Meta keywords are a good place to include common misspellings because nobody likes to include spelling mistakes in the content. So they are almost un-needed nowadays. Yoast , the amazing WordPress Plugin even go out of their way to say no to meta keywords. So, why would you want to continue using meta keywords when all they seem to do is waste your time? Yoast even has gone as far as removing the meta keywords toggle out of their updated plugin in favour of the other SEO techniques.

This feature has been removed since mid-February Since Google is the number one search engine in the world, and we know this because of how we live our lives. Realistically Google is very similar to other search engines such as Yahoo and Bing. It does not use the meta keywords like it once did. In short, using them might be just a waste of your time and your main focus should be more on the Title Tags and the Meta description, which is talked about below.

There are other meta tags which Google and other search engines consider significant. Most websites use these meta tags and they can help your website reach high rankings.

Title tags are the titles which appear on search results pages, this is the part where researchers can click to go to a specific website. These are important because they directly express what your page includes.

Title tags are the first thing Google users will see when they search for anything. If you can grab their attention with a relevant and informative title, they will want to see more of your page. Focus on the length of your title tag, do not make them too long because Google allows a limited number of characters. Make the most out of it, and make your title straight to the point.

The number of times this article was shared on Twitter. Share this article. Email Subscription Subscribe. Do you still need to use meta keywords? Other use cases for meta keywords. How to remove meta keywords. Article by Joshua Hardwick. Like what we do? Come work with us. Subscribe Join our weekly digest. Skip to main content. Navigation Link. What Are Meta Keywords? Google and other search engines put a great deal of weight on the Meta title. Every page of your site should have a unique Meta title that is as relevant as possible to the page.

It should also incorporate the primary keyword phrase of that page, particularly if it is a target page in your SEO campaign. Meta titles do show up from time to time for human readers, for example in the browser bar and social media shares.