In WordPress, there’s an option to add meta keywords to an article or page. Naturally, I thought it would be important to include a specific keyword in everything I publish.

However, it seems this isn’t necessary—at least not since 2009, when Google officially announced that it no longer uses meta keywords for ranking. Early SEO practitioners had abused the system by stuffing keywords into low-quality content. Once Google realized that people were exploiting this for quick gains, it began ignoring meta keywords entirely.

Some experts now even suggest that you shouldn’t add meta keywords at all. They offer no SEO benefit and may reveal your keyword strategy to competitors.

The only real reason to use them today is for internal site searches. For example, I’ve added a search bar to my Archives page, and the plugin I’m using can search articles more effectively when meta keywords are present.

So, while adding meta keywords can make your content more accessible for on-site searches, it provides no advantage for SEO.