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.

One of the most important things to check when you’re not getting any traffic is your page’s loading speed.

I once read that most people won’t wait longer than three seconds for a site to load. I’m not sure if that number is exact, but I know I don’t wait long myself. Especially, when I visit a new site for the first time, my patience is limited—and I assume most internet users feel the same way.

To make sure your page loads quickly:

• Choose a reliable hosting plan
• Use a professional theme
• Avoid unnecessary plug-ins
• Upload images at the smallest size you actually need
• Use a plug-in designed to speed up your site

These are the key steps. A high-quality hosting plan is usually the most significant factor—although also the most expensive. A professional theme is next; it’s typically affordable and a one-time purchase.

The more plug-ins you install, the slower your site becomes, so only use the ones that are truly necessary. Some plug-ins help clean up your cache and improve overall performance, though, such as LiteSpeed Cache.

When it comes to images, avoid uploading them at full resolution. Think about the size at which the image will appear on your site, resize it accordingly, and reduce the file size. You can also compress your images to size the file down further:

1. Use GIMP (a free Photoshop alternative) to resize images
2. Use this free compressor to reduce file size

If you want to test your page loading speed, you can use free tools such as: Page Speed Insights

Search engines may be on their way out thanks to artificial intelligence, but I found myself wondering: How will AI crawl websites to generate its answers?

I believe that whatever systems companies like Google developed to search and index webpages will simply be repurposed to “train” AI models to judge whether a piece of content is high quality or not. In the end, what’s marketed as AI is often just another algorithm doing what Google’s crawlers have been doing for decades.

Because of this, AI optimization will not be very different from traditional search engine optimization.

Yesterday, for example, I used ChatGPT to look for a good movie. I wanted to start with the earliest classics and work my way through the history of cinema year by year. ChatGPT recommended silent films by Georges Méliès—among the first true movies, dating back to around 1898 (some say 1902). It gave me a link to a free YouTube upload and shared some background information with another source.

But how did ChatGPT know this was a good answer? And how did it know the link would actually lead me to the right place?

The answer is SEO. The information about the film, the link to the video, and the related resources were well optimized and ranked high in Google’s search results. ChatGPT simply relied on that structure to determine that these sources were likely to be high quality.

Of course, you usually have a brief conversation with the AI to fine-tune its responses—this is a form of answer optimization, that is unique to AI because it happens directly between the model and the user. Still, whenever an AI gives me a link, it’s doing so for essentially the same reason Google ranks a link highly.

Therefore, even if search engines fade because of AI, SEO will not disappear. Most of its principles will continue to influence how AI models refer users to your content, just as Google does today. Understanding the basics of SEO is still essential—and worth our time.