Keywords guidelines for SEO

Article
10/10/2017

Each page should have a single, unique <meta name="keywords"> tag that accurately reflects the contents of the page.

Explanation

Search engines use the <meta name="keywords"> tag to identify keywords relevant to the contents of a page.

Use a descriptive and representative keyword phrase that people might search for in the <meta name="keywords"> tag, and that accurately describes the information that will be provided on the page.

In a keywords declaration, the comma character (,) delineates terms. Any word or phrase between two commas, or between a comma and a quotation mark ("), is considered a single term.

Guidelines

The <meta name="keywords"> tag should be defined in the <head> tag section of the page, after the <title> and <meta name="description"> tags.

Review each <meta name="keywords"> tag in the site to make sure that it accurately describes the page that contains it.

Check each <meta name="keywords"> tag for the following:

Each page should have a <meta name="keywords"> tag.

For more information, see WEB1034 - No keywords are defined for the page.
A <meta name="keywords"> tag should occur only once in a page.

For more information, see WEB1033 - The <meta name="keywords"> tag should be declared only once in a page.
Each <meta name="keywords"> tag should be a child of the <head> tag.

For more information, see WEB1029 - The <meta name="keywords"> tag is not inside the <head> tag section.
A <meta name="keywords"> tag should not be empty and should not contain more than 874 characters.

For more information, see WEB1031 - The <meta name="keywords"> tag contents are too short and WEB1030 - The <meta name="keywords"> tag contents are too long.
The <meta name="keywords"> tag should contain no more than one instance of the same term.

For more information, see WEB1035 - The <meta name="keywords"> tag contains multiple instances of a single term.

Keywords guidelines for SEO

Explanation

Guidelines

See also

Concepts

Additional resources