You can use meta keywords in meta tags to provide search engines with additional information about a page’s content. They are hidden from visitors and can be found in the HTML source code of a webpage.

A meta keywords tag might look something like this:The majority of website builders and content management systems make it simple to add meta keywords, but is it worth the effort?

Do meta keywords still need to be used?

For at least a decade, Google hasn’t used the meta keywords tag to help rank websites. We are aware of this because Matt Cutts, the former Head of Google’s Webspam Team, stated in a 2009 video: […] In our search ranking, we don’t use the keywords meta tag.

Fast forward to 2020, and according to a recent Twitter poll conducted by Bill Slawski, the majority of SEO professionals no longer use the keywords meta tag.

However, you should keep in mind that SEO is about more than just Google, so there are a few good reasons to use the keywords meta tag.

1. It is possible that Yandex still makes use of it.

Yandex is the most popular Russian search engine on the Internet, and its market share in Russia is roughly equivalent to that of Google. Meta keywords “can be used when determining the page’s relevance to search queries,” according to their official documentation.

Does this imply that meta keywords have been shown to influence Yandex search rankings? No. However, the information is probably still correct given that that page has only been online since late-2018.

In a blog post from 2014, Bing stated that the meta keywords tag has “dead in terms of SEO value.” In 2020, Bing’s Head of Evangelism tweeted the same thing, effectively confirming this.

However, in 2011, Bing gave the impression that it might be utilized as a spam signal to assist in the identification of low-quality pages.

Whether that is still the case is unknown, but it is unquestionably not a ranking factor.”

Meta keywords have long been in the garbage heap of history, and we will ignore them directly,”

Baidu engineer stated in their webmaster community in 2012.Naver handles 74.7 percent of all South Korean web searches, according to Wikipedia.

Even though we were unable to locate a definitive statement regarding their utilization of the meta keywords tag, none of their extensive documentation on optimizing your website makes any mention of meta keywords.

Given that, we can assume that it is either unimportant or not used at all.

2. Some internal search systems, such as SOLR, Algolia, and those built on Elasticsearch, use the meta keywords tag for internal site searches.

The majority of popular CMSs do not use it for internal site searches.It’s possible that you’ll need to use the keywords meta tag if any of these powers your internal search.

Other uses for the keywords meta tag You probably already know that most people don’t need to use it, but there are a few things you can do with it

Make an inner labeling framework

Numerous CMS’ and web designers make it simple to add meta catchphrases to pages, as do many free WordPress Search engine optimization modules.

The tag can easily be “repurposed” for use in an internal keyword tagging system as a result of this. Just set the tag as your objective watchword on each page.

For instance, if the target keyword for our page was “SEO tips,” it would look like this:If you do this on each page, it will be simple to determine whether you have already targeted a keyword in the future.

<Meta name=”keywords”

content=”seo tips”/>

Simply slither your site with an examining device like Ahrefs’ Site Review, then, at that point, use Page Voyager to search for pages with your catchphrase in the meta watchwords tag.

There are three reasons why doing this may be beneficial: Contribute to stopping keyword cannibalism.

Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pages on a website target the same keyword. It has the potential to result in a wide range of issues, including undesirable pages outranking desirable pages.

Work should not overlap. There are probably a lot of people and teams working on similar projects if you work in enterprise SEO.

Having an internal system for tagging keywords helps keep different teams from going after the same keyword.

Find opportunities for collaboration. You might want to work with a different team to improve and update your content if you notice that you are not ranking well for one of your keywords.

According to a recent Twitter poll conducted by Bill Slawski, approximately 33% of individuals still utilize the keywords meta tag. As a portion of those individuals will without a doubt be your rivals, this can come in very convenient for finding ‘seed catchphrases’ during watchword research.

Simply search for the keywords meta tag on the homepage of your rival.Just keep in mind that you might need to check a few websites before you find any seed keywords that are useful because many of them either leave their keywords meta tags empty or with junk.

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