Story-Based Question
Imagine you’re launching a new website for a local bookstore that sells books online. You’re trying to boost your search rankings and attract more visitors to your site. While researching SEO, you come across the term “meta keywords” and wonder if they are still worth using on your site. Should you include them in the meta tags for your pages, or are they a thing of the past?
Exact Answer
Meta keywords are no longer relevant for SEO. Search engines like Google no longer use meta keywords as a ranking factor.
Explanation
Meta keywords used to be an important part of SEO strategy in the early days of the internet. Website owners would add relevant keywords in the meta keyword tag on their pages, and search engines would use those keywords to help determine the page’s relevance to search queries. However, over time, this practice became abused. Websites would stuff their meta keyword tags with excessive or irrelevant keywords in an attempt to manipulate search rankings, leading to poor user experiences and low-quality results.
Search engines, especially Google, no longer rely on meta keywords to rank pages. Google officially stopped using them as a ranking signal back in 2009, and other major search engines followed suit. Instead, they focus on content quality, backlinks, user experience, and other factors that contribute to a website’s relevance and authority.
For your bookstore’s website, instead of spending time adding meta keywords, you should focus on optimizing your content for user intent, using relevant keywords naturally in your titles, headings, and body text, and ensuring that your website is easy to navigate and mobile-friendly.
Example
Let’s say you have a page on your bookstore’s website about new arrivals. In the past, you might have added a list of keywords like “buy new books,” “bookstore new arrivals,” and “latest books for sale” to your meta keyword tag. However, since meta keywords no longer impact SEO, these don’t offer any value in terms of improving your rankings.
Instead, you should focus on crafting high-quality content that addresses what users are likely searching for, such as:
- Title: “Explore the Latest Book Arrivals at Our Local Bookstore”
- H1: “New Arrivals: Fresh Books You Can’t Miss”
- Body Content: A paragraph that describes the new books, their genres, and why they’re worth reading, naturally including phrases like “latest books” and “new book releases.”
Focusing on great content and user experience will drive more traffic and keep users engaged, which will improve your SEO in the long run.