Meta Keywords: Are They Still Important (5 Best Practices)?

Meta Keywords

Meta keywords form the foundation of your SEO strategy. Every content strategist and website designer pays attention to these HTML codes because they ensure consistent traffic.

For a webpreneur, these tags and keywords are of primal importance as they ensure that your content or product is captivating to humans and search engines. With these keywords tags, boost your conversion rate, enhance a user’s navigational experience, and increase your brand visibility by convincing search engine bots of your content authority.

Individual efforts have their limits. Seek professional help from reputed organizations like Authority Magnet and gain higher positions on the search engine results page.

What Are Meta Keywords?

What are Meta Keywords?

Meta keywords are commonly known as meta tags that content writers use to provide search engines context about their page. They appear in the HTML codes of a webpage and are often different from the target keyword you’re trying to rank for.

These behind-the-scenes keywords never appear on the live page but on the code of your web page.

They look like this:

<meta name=”keywords” content= “keyword1, keyword2, keyword3”>

For instance, if you’ve written an article about ‘the basics of SEO,’ your meta keywords can be SEO, search engine optimization, and the basics of SEO. Then, the meta tag will look like this:

<meta name=”keywords” content= “SEO, basics of SEO, search engine optimization “>

Several digital marketing and SEO experts recommend that meta tags, especially meta titles, and descriptions, make for the entire appearance that attracts viewers. They not only share an idea about what to expect from a particular article, but these tags determine how your website appears to your viewers and how navigable it is.

Note: Google prioritizes web pages that offer the best experience to its users. Therefore, when you have the correct tags on your web pages that improve user experience, your rank will be pushed upward by a few spots on the SERP.

Are Meta Keywords Still Important?

SEO experts have varying opinions concerning the usage of meta keywords. But one thing is clear — Google doesn’t use meta keywords as a ranking factor.

So, is it still essential to use meta keywords?

In this virtual real estate, audience attention marks the success of your online business. Digital viewers will flock to your website if it’s attractive or your offer is alluring and engaging.

Meta keywords help you present a website or page that not only satisfies user intent, but they help you design your digital domain in a way that compels your audience to visit.

In 2017, John Mueller stated, ‘Meta Tags can affect the way that users see your site in the search results and whether or not they click through to your site.’

In simple words, meta keyword tags determine how a potential audience views your web content. Besides, these meta keywords can influence your website’s click-through rate and affect the brand image in several ways.

How?

Meta description and title tags design the product packaging, and your online customers will buy the product, judging its packaging. This first impression determines a customer’s purchase intent and increases your CTR.

Have you noticed Reddit and how it functions?

Reddit has removed bell and whistle options. They solely depend on meta tags and keywords for conversions and boosting CTR.

We can thus summarize meta keywords as a business card that maintains professionalism and brand image and entices audiences to convert simultaneously.

Besides Reddit, Amazon is another example of a successful website exploiting meta keywords to the fullest. Their e-commerce site only discloses the title tag, meta description, and product image to draw customers’ attention.

Amazon has established that meta keywords are enough to sell your products and services.

Above this, these behind-the-scene keyword tags automate marketing funnels. In the case of email marketing, the tags provide essential details about the links emailed.

In addition to the endless benefits of meta keyword tags, they help social media influencers, and bloggers share your content.

Contact Authority Magnet for quality content writing services that leverage these underrated HTML codes to gain organic ranking and drive increased traffic.

Best Practices of Different Types of Meta Keywords

Optimize your online start-up business with the following meta tags:

1. Title Tags

Title Tags

Title tags are HTML code that shows the name of the web page and content to both the search engine and the users. Remember, the title tag differs from H1 or the header tag of your content.

How?

Title tags only appear on the search result, are visible only to viewers, and are never present within the content.

When writing the meta title, ensure they have the recommended character limit of 78 and 70 for mobile and desktop devices, respectively. However, SEO analysts recommend you don’t use all the characters but stick to within 60.

Note: Long-tailed keywords can be an exception.

Ensure you’ve inserted the keyword in your title tag. It’s essential so that search engine crawlers can identify whether your article matches the viewer’s search intent.

For instance, you are a small business owner selling fresh flower arrangements in London. Increase your sales and maximize the SEO ROI by adding keywords like ‘Best Florist in London’ to the title tag of your content.

While writing meta title tags, ensure they’re unique, original, and engaging. The page title should be captivating enough to attract audience attention and have the potential to increase the CTR of your webpage.

The title tag should be the summary of the main topic. Be accurate and descriptive when curating the title of the page.

2. Image Tags

Image Tags

You don’t use meta tags for images. But images still need defining tags that help search engines and link aggregators navigate your website.

For a better user experience, combine the alt text and title of the image as its tag. With this combination, the image tag HTML code would look like this:

<img src=“image.jpg” alt=“image description” title=“image tooltip”>

When the viewer moves the cursor over the image, they get to see the title keywords of the picture.

On the other hand, alt text appears when the image isn’t visible to the audience. It describes the pictures, which helps viewers and search engines to understand what the image is about.

Several CMSs have alt text blocks that you should fill in for better audience reach. The more blocks you fill, the more visible your images become.

3. Meta Description Tags

Meta Description Tags

Meta description tags summarize your content and appear as a snippet on the search results page. This HTML element provides a basic overview of the content.

Thus, before a user clicks on the search result, the content overview will tell them if the content is what they’re looking for.

The HTML code looks like this:

<head>

<meta name= “description” content=” Add engaging meta descriptions for every blog you write. Make sure that these descriptions are 160 characters.”>

</head>

These descriptive tags don’t have any Google-defined character limit. But most SEO analysts recommend the description tag should have a 160-character limit. In the case of mobile search snippets, meta description has an average character limit of 130.

However, it isn’t related to search engine algorithms at all.

Note: Meta description isn’t a part of Google’s ranking factor. Despite that fact, it’s still crucial for digital marketers who want to increase the click-through rate of their web page.

Remember, if you don’t add meta descriptions to your content, Google will use the opening lines as its content preview.

4. Robots NoIndex And Nofollow Meta Tags

Robots NoIndex and Nofollow Meta Tags

Robot meta tags are HTML instructions that inform search engine crawlers as to which content to index and which ones to avoid. The code looks like this:

<html><head>

<meta name=” robots” content=”noindex” />

</head>

Such tags aren’t always necessary. That’s because whatever content you post, search engine bots will crawl (or follow) and index them by default.

You can divert the search engine’s focus from a specific web page using these functions.

For instance, one of your web pages contains a broken link or duplicate content. With ‘nofollow’ or ‘noIndex’ functions, direct the search engine crawlers to not index or follow the said link or web content.

5. Viewport Tags

Viewport Tags

Not many content writers pay attention to this, but viewport tags are crucial for overall SEO health. It’s popularly known as Responsive Design Meta Tag. Use this mega tag type to monitor mobile web browsers on the mobile.

The HTML syntax for viewport tags looks like this:

<meta name=”viewport”content=”width=device-width,initial-scale=1″>

The web page appears in a popup window called viewport. Web developers resize and adjust the viewport dimensions to increase the user’s mobile experience.

Note: 94% of Google’s ranking depends on a web page’s mobile responsiveness. Therefore, the viewport meta tag is essential and determines the success of a web page.

Conclusion

Over the years, the digital world has transformed as much as a user’s search pattern has evolved. From contextual search to A.I. assistants, everything is changing how we perceive and consume content.

Keep pace with these evolving times and make your web domain more alluring than ever.

These signaling factors ensure that potential online customers find you easily.

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