Remove the keywords tag. Google ignores it, a stuffed one can look like spam to Bing, and competitors can read it. Spend the time on page titles, descriptions and the words on each page.

A list nobody has read in years

A new office manager at a long-established business views the source of its home page. Near the top sits a keywords tag holding about seventy phrases separated by commas.

The same list sits on every page. It names every service, every nearby town and a few misspellings, written when the site was built and untouched since.

Someone suggests bringing it up to date for the busy season. It would take an afternoon, and it would make no difference to how Google treats the site.

What the tag was for

The keywords tag dates from the early years of search, when engines read it as the page's own summary of its subjects.

Site owners soon filled it with every phrase they hoped to be found for, including ones the page never mentioned, and search engines learned to distrust it.

Visitors never see the tag. It sits in the page's code, which made it easy to fill in and just as easy to forget.

Who still reads it

The tag's readers now are not the ones it was written for:

Only the last does the business any good, and only on sites whose own search was set up to use it.

What the list gives away

A stuffed tag is a free summary of the business's search plans: every service it wants to be found for and every town it hopes to win, in one place.

A competitor planning a site or an advertising campaign can copy the list in seconds. The business spent time or money on that research and hands it over on every page.

Removing the tag closes that window without costing anything in search.

A worked example

A heavy equipment repair shop on the edge of a northern BC town rebuilds engines, hydraulics and undercarriages for excavators, loaders and logging machines, in its own bays and in the field.

Its site went up in 2007. Every page carried the same keywords tag: about seventy phrases, naming every make of machine, every town within a day's drive and several misspellings.

A new parts manager offered to bring the list up to date. A look at the pages showed the real gaps: every title was the shop's name alone, and no page had a description.

The tag came out of the template. Each page got its own title naming the work and the area, a two-sentence description, and a few paragraphs in the words operators use.

Field service, which the list had mentioned and no page had explained, got a page of its own. Google now reads that work described in sentences, and competitors no longer find a ready-made list.

Titles carry the weight

The page title matters far more than the keywords tag ever did. Google reads it, shows it as the headline of each result, and weighs it when deciding what the page is about.

Give each page its own title: the service it covers, the place, and the business name, with the most important words first so they survive the cut-off in the results.

A site where every title is the business name tells Google little and gives searchers no reason to choose one page over another.

Descriptions people read

The meta description is not used for ranking either, but Google often shows it as the text under the title. It is the page's short pitch in the results.

Write one for each page in plain sentences: what the visitor will find there and why it suits them. Never copy the same description across pages.

Webmaster Tools flags duplicate titles and descriptions under HTML Improvements, which gives a ready list of pages to fix.

The words on the page

The phrases in the old tag belong in the page text, where visitors and Google both read them, written as sentences a customer would recognise.

A list of seventy phrases becomes a handful of pages: one for each main kind of work and one for the area served, each explaining what is done and for whom.

Towns are better named where they make sense, such as a line about the area the field crew covers, than piled into a list at the bottom of every page.

Removing it safely

Removing the tag does not affect how Google ranks the site, because Google was not using it. Nothing else on the page depends on it.

Find where it comes from before deleting it. On older sites it sits in each page or a shared header; on WordPress and similar systems, a theme setting or an add-on may write it automatically.

Switch it off at that source rather than emptying it page by page, or the next person to edit the site will fill it in again.

The counter-case

Some site search tools, especially on older or larger sites, read the keywords tag to help match visitors' searches to pages. A short, honest tag can still serve that purpose.

A few directories and specialist search tools may also read it. For them, five accurate words do the job better than seventy.

But none of that is a reason to spend an afternoon on the list. The same afternoon spent on titles, descriptions and page text reaches every search engine and every visitor.

Before anyone updates the list

  1. Open the page source on several pages and find the tag.
  2. Find what writes it, whether template, theme setting or add-on.
  3. Remove it at that source.
  4. Write a title for each page, important words first.
  5. Write a description for each page in plain sentences.
  6. Move the phrases into page text where they belong.
  7. Check HTML Improvements in Webmaster Tools.

Step four is where the old list is finally put to use. Each phrase that mattered becomes part of a title or a page, read by Google and seen by searchers.

Rewriting titles so the business and the service still show after the cut-off is shown in page titles cut shorter in the new search results.

Frequently asked questions

Does Google use the meta keywords tag?

No. Google said in 2009 that it does not use the keywords tag in web ranking, so the list has no effect on where your pages appear.

Can a keywords tag hurt a site?

A tag stuffed with dozens of phrases can look like spam to Bing, which has said it treats heavy stuffing as a bad sign rather than a helpful one.

Why does it matter that competitors can read it?

Anyone can view a page's source and see the full list, which sets out the phrases, services and towns you are trying to win in one place.

Is it safe to remove the tag?

Yes. Google was not using it, so removing it changes nothing in its rankings. Remove it where it is generated, so nobody fills it in again.

What should replace the time spent on keywords?

A distinct title for each page with the important words first, a plain description for each page, and page text written in the words customers use.

Where can I find pages with weak titles?

Webmaster Tools lists duplicate titles and descriptions under HTML Improvements, which gives a ready list of pages that need their own wording.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Keywords tag still on every page?

Point us at the site, and we will take the tag out at its source and draft a title and description for every page.

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