WEB1033 - The <meta name="keywords"> tag should be declared only once in a page

  • Article

A <meta name="keywords"> tag should occur only once in a page.

Explanation

If more than one <meta name="keywords"> tag is defined in a page, search engines will analyze only one of them.

Details

If there is more than one <meta name="keywords"> tag inside the <head> tag section of a page, search engines may arbitrarily decide which of the <meta name="keywords"> tags is the most relevant in the search-engine results. This reduces the page relevancy for a keyword search and lowers the search-engine ranking of the page. Additionally, the site developer loses some degree of control over what the page should be targeted for.

Example

The following example shows correctly formatted <meta name="description"> and <meta name="keywords"> tags; "Proseware," "Proseware applications," "Proseware utilities," "Proseware tools," and "Proseware server tools" are treated as distinct terms.

<head>
    <title>Contact Proseware, Inc.</title>
    <meta name="description" content="Contact information for Proseware, Inc., including addresses, phone numbers, and email"/>
    <meta name="keywords" content="Proseware,Proseware applications,Proseware utilities,Proseware tools,Proseware server tools"/>
</head>

See also

Concepts

Keywords guidelines for SEO
SEO concepts
Search Engine Optimization

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