Do you want to add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress?
Keywords and meta descriptions allow you to improve your website's SEO ranking. This means more traffic, leads, and sales for your business.
In this article, we will show you how to easily add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress.
But, if you've never installed WordPress discover How to Install a WordPress Blog et How to search, install and activate a WordPress theme on your blog
But back to why we are here.
Why Add Keywords and Meta Descriptions in WordPress?
Keywords and meta descriptions allow you to tell search 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 description is a brief description of what your page or post is about.
It's your title, your meta description and your keywords that appear in the results of the Google search engine:
Meta keywords and meta description are HTML meta tags. They are part of your website's header code. They don't appear on your page or posts for visitors to see. However, search engines and browsers can use them.
WordPress SEO plugins allow you to add them very easily from your WordPress dashboard on every post and page of your website.
How important are meta keywords and meta descriptions for SEO?
Like most WordPress users, you're probably wondering if adding meta keywords and meta descriptions will improve your WordPress SEO rankings.
Although search engines don't share exactly how much weight they give to keywords or description, experts in SEO always recommend adding proper meta description and keywords for on-page SEO optimization.
Meta descriptions are widely used by search engines. In Google's search results, they appear below the title of your content, with the search term displayed in bold.
An effective meta description will encourage users to click and read your content. And what we do know is that a good click-through rate means Google will likely rank your content higher.
Now, when it comes to meta keywords, most modern search engines give very little importance or don't use them at all. The main exception is the Russian search engine Yandex.
Instead, search engines prefer you to add your targeted keywords in your title, description, and throughout your content. This is why SEO plugins like AIOSEO come with a TruSEO score that helps you optimize your content for targeted keywords and keyphrases.
Our recommendations for meta keywords and meta descriptions
We recommend adding a meta description for all posts and pages on your website, including your homepage, category pages, and tag pages.
Note: Google customizes the description based on the search query, so it will only use your meta description from time to time. However, it's still worth creating a meta description. It will appear for around 30% of users, and it can help you improve your SEO.
When it comes to meta keywords, it's up to you to use them or not. They won't harm your website, but they may not have much benefit either.
That said, let's see how to easily add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress.
Installation and activation of All in One SEO for WordPress
For this tutorial we will use All in One SEO (AIOSEO) which is the best WordPress plugin of SEO in the market. It allows you to easily optimize your entire WordPress website for better SEO and comes with a complete set of tools to grow your business.
First, you will need to install and activate the plugin All in One SEO. For more details, see our step-by-step guide 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 everything up.
After completing the setup, just click the “Finish Setup and Go to Dashboard” button.
Enable support for meta keywords in SEO
All in One SEO comes with built-in support for meta description and keywords. However, the keywords feature is disabled by default. Indeed, many search engines give little or no importance to keywords in their ranking.
To activate it, go in All in One SEO » Search Appearance » Advanceded in your WordPress dashboard. Then toggle the selector Use Meta Keywords from No to Yes.
After enabling meta keywords in WordPress, you will see a few more options. You can generate an article's keywords from its categories and/or tags. Also, you can dynamically generate keywords on your blog posts and archive pages.
It is up to you whether you want to use these automated options or not. Either way, you'll still be able to manually set keywords for each post and page.
Do not forget to click on the button « Save Changes at the bottom of the page after making changes.
Adding Meta Descriptions and Meta Keywords to Your WordPress Posts and Pages
First, you need to modify a post or page where you want to add your meta keywords and meta description.
Once on the content editor screen, scroll down to the “AIIOSEO Settings” box under the content area.
Adding a meta description to your post or page using AIOSEO
You will see your website title and an automatically generated description as a snippet. Below, you will see the Meta Description field.
Go ahead and enter a description in your Meta Description field. All in One SEO will let you know how many characters you used. This is important because Google will only show 160 characters in search results.
You will see that your snippet preview automatically updates as you type your meta description.
Once you're done, simply save or publish your post to save your meta description changes.
Using All in one SEO dynamic tags in your meta descriptions
If you want, you can add tags to your meta description. The ones that All in One SEO offers by default are the page content and the separator, but you can also add other dynamic tags.
For example, we've added the author's name to our meta description here.
To add a tag, just type the # character in the meta description box. You will then see a drop-down menu of available tags.
Adding meta keywords to your post or page using AIOSEO
To add your meta keywords, you need to click on the tab Advanced of your AIOSEO settings.
Just type in your keywords and hit enter after each one. It is important to only use relevant keywords for your content. Adding irrelevant keywords will not give you any SEO advantage.
Please note: Meta keywords are completely separate from your Focus keyword. You can set a Focus keyword under the General tab. The Focus keyword does not automatically become a meta keyword for your post or page.
Adding meta keywords and meta description to your homepage
You can also add meta keywords and meta description for your website homepage in WordPress. Here's how to do it using All in One SEO.
First, go to Search Appearance » Global Settings in your WordPress dashboard. Then scroll down to the section Home Page.
On this screen, you can easily enter a meta description and keywords, just like you would for a post or page.
All in One SEO will use your tagline as the default meta description. You can leave that in there or you can customize it.
You can also click on the other options to add these tags in your meta description. You can also add different tags by typing the # character in your meta description, as described above.
Tips: It is preferable to use these tags rather than manually typing your website's title, tagline, or separator character. This is because your meta description will automatically update if you later make any changes to any of this information.
Make sure you click the button Save changes at the bottom of the page after adding your meta description and keywords.
Meta keywords and meta description for WordPress category archives
You can also add keywords and description to your category and tag archive pages.
First of all, you need to visit the page Articles »Categories. Hover your mouse over the category you want to edit, then click the "Edit" link.
Scroll down on the category page to the AIOSEO Settings area. Here you just need to enter a meta description for your category. Again, you can use All in One SEO tags as part of this if you wish.
To add keywords, simply click on the tab Advanced as you would any post or page.
Be sure to save changes to your category before continuing.
Your meta description and keywords will now be used for the category page, which is the archive for posts in that category.
You can repeat the process to add meta tags and descriptions to your blog tags and other custom taxonomy archive pages.
All in One SEO integrates seamlessly with other WordPress plugins popular. This allows you to add keywords and meta description for your WooCommerce product pages, your SeedProd landing pagesEtc. ...
Recommended Resources
Find out about other recommended resources to help you build and manage your website.
- How to password protect a form in WordPress
- How to Add Users and Authors to WordPress
- How to Create a Paywall in WordPress
- How to Reset a Lost WordPress Password
- How to export and import Elementor models
Conclusion
So ! That's it for this tutorial. We hope this article helped you learn how to easily add keywords and meta description to your WordPress posts and pages. If you have some Comments or suggestions, do not hesitate to let us know in the reserved section.
However, you will also be able to consult our resources, if you need more elements to carry out your projects of creation of Internet sites, by consulting our guide on the WordPress blog creation or the one on Divi: the best WordPress theme of all time.
But meanwhile, share this article on your different social networks.
...
