Do you require to add keywords and meta information in WordPress?
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Meta keywords and descriptions allow you to improve your site’s SEO ranking. That means more traffic, leads, and sales for your company.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress.
Why add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress?
Keywords and information allow you to tell research engines more about the content of your posts and pages.
Keywords are important words or phrases that people are likely to search for to find your content. A meta information is a brief description of what your page or post is about.
It’s your meta title, description, and keywords that appear in Google search results:
Meta keywords and meta summary are HTML meta tags. They are sections of your site’s header code. They don’t look on your page or post for guests to see. However, search engines and browsers can use them.
WordPress SEO plug-ins make it very easy to add them from the WordPress admin area for each post and page on your site.
How important are meta keywords and meta descriptions to SEO?
Like most maximum WordPress users, you are probably wondering if joining meta keywords and meta information will improve my WordPress SEO ranking.
Although search engines don’t exactly share the weight they place on keywords or descriptions, SEO experts always recommend adding meta descriptions and keywords that are appropriate for SEO optimization on the page.
Meta descriptions are widely used by search engines. In Google search results, they appear below the title of your content, with the search term shown in bold.
An effective meta description will encourage users to click and read your content. And what we do know is that a good clickthrough rate means that Google is likely to rank your content higher.
Now, when it comes to meta keywords, most modern search engines attach very little importance or even use them.
Instead, search engines prefer that you add your specific keywords in your title, description, and in all of your content. That’s why SEO plug-ins like AIO SEO come with a TruSEO score that helps you optimize your content for specific keywords and key phrases.
Our recommendations for meta keywords and meta descriptions
We suggest adding a meta-information for all posts and pages on your site, including your home page, section pages, and tag pages.
Note: Google customizes the information based on the search question, so it will only use your meta information a few times. However, it is still worth creating a meta description. It will appear to about 30% of users and can help your SEO.
When it comes to meta keywords, it depends on whether you use them or not. They will not harm your website, but they also may not bring many benefits.
That said, let’s take a look at how to easily add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress.
Installing and also add activating All in One SEO for WordPress
For this tutorial, we will use All in One SEO (AIO SEO), which is the best SEO plugin for WordPress on the market. It allows you to easily optimize your entire WordPress site for better SEO and comes with a comprehensive set of tools to expand your business.
First, you will need to install and activate the All in One SEO plugin. For more items, see our step-by-step example on how to install a WordPress plugin.
After activation, All in One SEO will guide you through a simple setup wizard. Just follow the step-by-step instructions to set up everything for your website.
After completing the configuration, just click on the ‘Complete configuration and go to the panel’ button.
Enable meta keyword support for a full SEO
All in One SEO comes with integrated support for meta description and keywords. However, the meta keywords feature is disabled by default. This is because many search engines place little or no importance on keywords in their rankings.
To enable it, go to All in One SEO »Search Appearance» Advanced in the WordPress dashboard. Then, change the meta keywords and switch from No to Yes.
After allowing meta keywords in WordPress, you will see some new options. You can generate the keywords for a post from its categories and/or tags. Also, you can dynamically generate keywords in your blog posts and archive pages.
You decide whether you want to use these automated options or not. Regardless, you can always manually define keywords for each post and page.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page after making your changes.
Adding meta information and meta keywords to your WordPress posts and pages
First, you require to edit a post or page anywhere you require to add your meta keywords and meta description.
AIO SEO works in both the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg) and the classic WordPress editor.
Once on the content editor cover, scroll down to the ‘AIO SEO Settings’ box under the content area.
Adding a meta description to your post or page using AIO SEO
You’ll see your site’s title and an automatically generated description as the snippet. Below that, you will see the Meta Information field.
Go ahead and enter a description in the Meta Description field. All in One SEO will let you know how many characters you have used. This is great because Google will only display 160 characters in the search results.
You’ll see that your snippet’s preview updates automatically as you enter the meta description.
When you’re done, simply save or publish your post to save changes to your meta description.
Using all dynamic SEO tags in your meta descriptions
Optionally, you can add tags to your meta summary. The ones that All in One SEO allows by default are the page content and the separator, but you can also add other dynamic tags.
To add a tag, just type the # character in the meta description box. You will see a drop-down menu of available tags.
Adding meta keywords to your post or page using AIO SEO
To add your meta keywords, you need to click on the Advanced tab of the AIO SEO settings.
Just type in your keywords and press Enter after each one. It is important to use only relevant keywords for your content. Adding irrelevant keywords will have no SEO benefit.
You can define a focus keyword on the General tab. This is for All in One SEO to give you suggestions on how to improve your content.
Adding meta keywords and meta descriptions to your homepage
You can also add meta keywords and a meta description to your website’s homepage on WordPress. Here’s how to do this using All in One SEO.
You can also click on other options to add these tags to your meta description. Alternatively, you can add many tags by typing the # number in your meta information, as described above.
Tip: It is better to use these tags instead of manually entering the website title, slogan, or separator character. This is because your meta description will update automatically if you make changes to any of them.
Meta keywords and description for WordPress category files
You can also add keywords and descriptions to your categories and tag file pages.
First, you require to visit the Posts »Categories page. Mouse over the section you require to edit and click on the ‘Edit’ link.Scroll down the category page to the AIO SEO Settings box. Here, you only need to enter a meta description for your category. Again, you can use the All in One SEO tags if you want
To add keywords, just click the Advanced tab as you would any post or page.
Make sure to save changes to your category before proceeding.
Your meta description and keywords will now be used for the category page, which is the post archive for that category.You can repeat the process to add meta keywords and descriptions to your blog tags and other custom taxonomy file pages.
All in One SEO integrates seamlessly with other popular WordPress plug-ins. This allows you to add keywords and meta descriptions to your WooCommerce product pages, SeedProd landing pages, MemberPress course pages, and more.
We trust this article has helped you see how to easily add keywords and meta information to your WordPress posts and pages. You may also want to see our step-by-step guide on how to create an email newsletter to increase traffic to your site, and our comparison of the best WordPress contact form plug-ins.