Is Meta Keywords Important For Websites?

[chanel27]

Hi,

I understand that meta title and descriptions are very important for websites.

I would like to know if meta keywords are important?

I have seen people talking about meta keywords are useless and it should be removed from the website to prevent competitors from knowing your keywords.

Anyone has anything to share?

[theLotter]

Definitely not important.  I still add them in because I think it helps our content writers structure the page and some minor search engines use them.  I know some people think they can actually cause harm and don't use them at all.  Whatever you do, make sure not to spend too much time on them and not to keyword stuff.

The only time they have any relevance is if you are using them for Google news.

[chanel27]

Thank you. I have removed the meta keywords on my website.
I guess Google doesnt give alot of weight to meta keywords.

[rikano]

Hello,

Sure, meta keywords are not important for google bot, but for other search engines it does. Yahoo, bing and other smaller search robots do care about these keywords. They help them associate the indexed content to the right keywords, at least in the starting phase. So, if you want to get rankings only in google and not in other search engine, remove the meta keywords.

[littlesthobo]

Hi

For the official line on meta keywords form Google, I've attached this link:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Google officially announced in 2009 that meta keywords was not a factor in ranking at all.   I also believe that the description isn;t a ranking factor - the reason you need to focus on the description is to ensure that it has a strong hook that accurately reflects the content of the page to entice the searcher to click on the link.

[chanel27]

Thanks for the tips.

[chanel27]

Got it thank you!

[john4math]

Google doesn't use them at all.  Bing uses them, but mostly as a spam signal (see here).  I wouldn't bother with them.

[chanel27]

Thank you for your feedback John!