How to add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress?

Want to correctly add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress?

Meta keywords and descriptions allow you to improve your site'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.

Why add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress?

Keywords and descriptions allow you to inform search engines about the content of 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 short description of what a page or post is about.

This is the meta title, description, and keywords that appear in Google search results. The keywords and meta description are HTML meta tags. They are part of the website header code. They don't appear on the page or post for visitors to see. However, search engines and browsers can use them.

WordPress SEO plugins make it very easy to add them from the WordPress admin area for every post and page on your site.

How important are keywords and meta descriptions for SEO?

Like most WordPress users, you are probably wondering if adding meta keywords and meta descriptions will improve my WordPress SEO rankings.

While search engines do not share the exact weight they give to keywords or descriptions, SEO experts always recommend adding an appropriate meta description and keywords to optimize on-page SEO.

Meta descriptions are widely used by search engines. In Google search results, they appear below the content title and the search term is shown in bold.

An effective meta description will encourage users to click and read your content. We know 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 or no use of them. The main exception is the Russian Yandex search engine.

Instead, search engines prefer you to include focused keywords in your title, description, and all content. This is why SEO plugins like AIOSEOhaving a TruSEO score that helps optimize your content for targeted keywords and key phrases.

Our recommendations for keywords and meta descriptions

We recommend that you add a meta description to all posts and pages on your site, including your home page, category pages, and tagged pages.

Note: Google adjusts the description based on your search query, so it will only use the meta description for a certain amount of time. However, it is still worth creating a meta description. Will appear for approximately 30% users and can help with SEO.

When it comes to meta keywords, it's up to you to use them. They won't hurt your site, but they might not be of much benefit either.

That said, let's take a look at how to easily add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress.

All-in-One SEO Installation and Activation for WordPress

For this tutorial, we'll use All in One SEO (AIOSEO), which is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It allows you to easily optimize your entire WordPress site for better SEO and includes a comprehensive set of tools for developing your business.

First you need to install and activate the plugin AIOSEO,. For more information, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After activation AIOSEOwill guide you through a simple setup wizard. Just follow the step-by-step instructions to get everything set up for your website.

After completing the configuration, just click "Finish setup and go to the dashboard" (Finish Setup and Go to the Dashboard).

Enabling meta keywords support in All in One SEO

AIOSEO, has built-in support for meta descriptions and keywords. However, the meta keywords feature is turned off by default. This is because many search engines give little or no importance to keywords in their rankings.

To enable it, go to All in One SEO Search Appearance in the WP admin panel and then to »Advanced on the plugin dashboard. Then toggle the meta keywords from No to Yes.

When you enable meta keywords in WordPress, you'll see a few more options. You can generate post keywords from its categories and / or tags. You can also dynamically generate keywords in your blog posts and archive pages.

It is up to you whether you want to use these automatic options or not. Regardless, you'll always be able to manually define keywords for each post and page.

Don't forget to click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the page after making your changes.

Adding meta descriptions and meta keywords to WordPress posts and pages

First, you need to edit the post or page where you want to add keywords and meta description.

AIOSEO works on both the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg) and the classic WordPress editor.

In the content editor screen, scroll down to the "AIOSEO Settings" field under the content area.

Adding a meta description to a post or page using AIOSEO

As an excerpt, you will see the title of your website and an auto-generated description. Below you will see the Meta Description field.

Go ahead and enter a description in the 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 the search results.

You will see the snippet preview is automatically updated as you enter the meta description.

When you're done, just save or post your post to save the changes to your meta description.

Using dynamic All in One SEO tags in your meta descriptions

Optionally, you can add tags to your meta description. The ones that All in One SEO offers by default are Page Content and Separator, but you can add other dynamic tags as well.

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 field. You will then see a drop-down menu with the available tags.

Adding meta keywords to a post or page using AIOSEO

To add meta keywords, you need to click on the Advanced tab in the AIOSEO settings.

Just type in keywords and hit Enter after each one. It's important to only use keywords that are relevant to your content. Adding irrelevant keywords will not bring any SEO benefits.

Tip: meta keywords are completely separate from your keyword. You can set a keyword in the General tab. It is for SEO All in One to give you recommendations on how to improve your content. The Focus keyword does not automatically become a meta keyword for a post or page.

Adding meta keywords and meta description to your home page

You can also add meta keywords and a meta description for your site's home page in WordPress. Here's how to do it with SEO All in One.

First, go to Search Appearance »Global Settings in the WordPress admin panel. Then scroll down to the Home section.

On this screen, you can easily enter the meta description and keywords just like you would for a post or page.

All in One SEO will use your tagline as the meta description by default. You can leave it there or adjust it.

You can also click on other options to add these tags to your meta description. Alternatively, you can add various tags by entering the character # in your meta description as described above.

Tip: It's better to use these tags than manually typing your site title, tagline, or separator character. This is because the meta description will automatically update if you later make changes to any of them.

Make sure you click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page after adding your meta description and keywords.

Meta keywords and description of WordPress category archives

You can also add keywords and description to categories and tag archive pages.

First you need to visit the Posts »Categories page. Hover your mouse over the category you want to edit, and then click the "Edit" link.

Scroll down the category page to the AIOSEO Settings field. Here, just enter a meta description for your category. Again, you can use All in One SEO tags in this if you like.

To add keywords, just click the Advanced tab as you would with any post or page.

Make sure you save changes to your category before proceeding.

Your meta description and keywords will now be used on a category page that is an archive of posts for that category.

You can repeat this process to add meta keywords and descriptions to your blog tags and other custom taxonomy archive pages.

All in One SEO integrates seamlessly with other popular WordPress plugins. This allows you to add keywords and meta description to WooCommerce product pages, SeedProd landing pages, MemberPress course pages and more.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily add keywords and meta description to your WordPress posts and pages.