Meta Keywords

What are Meta Keywords?

Meta tags are snippets of HTML code that provide information about a webpage’s content to browsers and search engines. Meta Keywords are a type of meta tag that lists keywords relevant to the webpage’s content. Meta Keywords are not visible to users; they can be viewed only by examining the source code of the page.

Meta Keywords, which played a key role in SEO, are now irrelevant as major search engines such as Google and Bing no longer consider meta keywords for search rankings due to extensive manipulative practices like keyword stuffing.

Structure of meta keywords

<head>

<meta name = “keywords”, content = “Keyword1, keyword2, keyword3”>

</head>

Are meta keywords relevant to your website?

Meta keywords are not relevant today in SEO. But in the early 2000s, meta keywords were one of the most important factors in search rankings. Major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing no longer consider meta keywords for their search rankings.

Meta keywords lost their relevance due to extensive manipulative practices like keyword stuffing was noticed by search engines. Many websites relied on these practices to attract traffic towards their websites. Apart from this, keywords can be viewed from a page’s source code allowing others to replicate it. To avoid such practices, Google in 2009 announced that they do not consider meta keywords for search ranking.

If not meta keywords, then what ?

As meta keywords went obsolete, modern search engines rely on other factors for search ranking. The efficient tactics to increase your rankings includes the following :

  • Strategic keywords: Putting keywords strategically instead of keyword stuffing is a very efficient practice to improve your rankings. Adding relevant keywords to your introductory paragraphs, subheadings, and URLs will help.
  • Authentic Content: Create high-quality content without any duplication.
  • Add backlinks to boost the credibility of your website and internal links to connect related pages.