Every week, we get dozens of emails from WordPress users asking why their content isn’t ranking in Google. Almost always, it comes down to the same issue: they haven’t properly set up their keywords and meta descriptions.
Over the past decade of running multiple successful WordPress sites, we’ve learned that getting SEO right doesn’t have to be complicated.
The key is understanding how to properly add and optimize your keywords and meta descriptions, the two fundamental elements that tell search engines what your content is about.
We’ve put together this straightforward guide to show you exactly how to handle keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress. These are the same techniques we use across all our websites that bring in millions of visitors each month.
Why Add Keywords and Meta Descriptions in WordPress?
At WPBeginner, we’ve found that one of the most important aspects of SEO is helping search engines understand your content. Keywords and meta descriptions are essential tools that tell search engines exactly what your WordPress posts and pages are about.
Keywords are the specific terms and phrases your target audience uses when searching for content like yours. You can think of them as the language your potential visitors speak when looking for information.
Meta descriptions, on the other hand, are your content’s ‘elevator pitch’, a brief, compelling summary that appears in search results.
Here’s how these elements appear in Google search results:
While keywords and meta descriptions might sound technical, they’re actually quite straightforward. They’re HTML meta tags that live in your website’s header code. They are invisible to visitors but crucial for search engines and browsers.
The good news is that you don’t need to touch any code. Modern WordPress SEO tools and plugins make it easy to add and optimize these elements right from your dashboard.
How Important Are Meta Keywords and Meta Descriptions for SEO?
Based on our decade-plus experience and extensive testing across thousands of WordPress sites, we’ve gained clear insights into what works. Meta descriptions continue to play a vital role in search results, though Google doesn’t always use the ones we write.
When our meta descriptions do appear and are written effectively, they help improve click-through rates and can indirectly impact rankings through better engagement. Search terms even appear in bold when they match user queries.
The landscape for keywords has evolved significantly. Traditional meta keywords now have limited impact on most search engines. Yandex (the Russian search engine) is the main exception.
Modern SEO focuses instead on natural keyword placement in your page titles, content headings, body text, and meta descriptions.
Our Recommendations for Meta Keywords and Meta Descriptions
After helping millions of WordPress users improve their SEO, our recommendations are clear and straightforward. For meta descriptions, we strongly advocate creating unique, compelling descriptions for every blog post, important page, homepage, and category page.
This extra effort pays off in better visibility and click-through rates.
When it comes to keywords, focus on natural placement within your content. Tools like AIOSEO‘s TruSEO score can guide you in optimizing your content effectively without falling into the trap of keyword stuffing.
Pro Tip: While Google may sometimes generate its own description, a well-crafted meta description can significantly improve your click-through rates when it does appear.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress. Use the links below to jump to the section you are interested in:
- Installing and Activating All in One SEO for WordPress
- Enabling Meta Keyword Support in All in One SEO
- Adding Keywords and Meta Descriptions to Your WordPress Posts and Pages
- Adding Keywords and a Meta Description for Your Homepage
- Adding Keywords and Meta Descriptions to WordPress Category and Tag Archives
- Bonus: Track Your Keyword Performance with All in One SEO
How to Add Keywords and Meta Descriptions in WordPress (Video Tutorial)
If you prefer the written tutorial, then please continue reading.
Installing and Activating All in One SEO for WordPress
For this tutorial, we will be using 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 comes with a comprehensive set of tools to grow your business.
First, you will need to install and activate the All in One SEO plugin. For more details, see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, All in One SEO will take you through a simple setup wizard. Just follow the step-by-step instructions to get everything set up for your site. Alternatively, you can follow our guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress correctly.
After completing the setup, simply click the ‘Finish Setup and Go to the Dashboard’ button.
Enabling Meta Keyword Support in All in One SEO
All in One SEO comes with 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 » Advanced in your WordPress dashboard. Then, switch the meta keywords toggle from No to Yes.
After enabling meta keywords in WordPress, you will see some additional options.
You can generate a post’s keywords from its categories and/or tags. Also, you can dynamically generate relevant keywords on your WordPress blog posts and archive pages.
It’s up to you whether you want to use these automated options or not. Regardless, you will 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 to store the changed settings.
Adding Keywords and Meta Descriptions to Your WordPress Posts and Pages
First, you need to edit a post or page where you want to add your meta keywords and meta description. AIOSEO works in both the WordPress block editor and the classic editor.
Once you are on the content editor screen, scroll down to the ‘AIOSEO Settings’ box below the content area.
Adding a Meta Description to Your Post or Page Using AIOSEO
You will see your site’s SEO title and an automatically generated description as the snippet. Below that, you will see the ‘Meta Description’ field.
Go ahead and enter a description into the ‘Meta Description’ field. All in One SEO will let you know how many characters you have used. This is important because Google will only show 160 characters on search results pages (SERPs).
You will see that your snippet preview automatically updates as you type in your meta description.
Once you have finished, simply save or publish your post to save the changes to your meta description.
Using All in One SEO’s Dynamic 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 have added the author’s name to our meta description here.
To add a tag, simply type the ‘#’ character into the meta description box.
You will then see a dropdown menu of available tags.
You can choose from tags like Category Title, Current Year, Post Date, Post Title, Site Title, Post Excerpt, and more.
Using All in One SEO’s ChatGPT Integration to Automatically Generate Meta Descriptions
If you want to save time, then you can also use All in One SEO’s AI-powered Title / Description Generator. It uses ChatGPT to automatically craft high-quality meta descriptions based on the main theme of your content.
To get started, simply click on the robot icon in the ‘Meta Description’ field.
If you haven’t used this feature before, you will be prompted to create an OpenAI account.
Enter your email address and follow the easy steps in the setup wizard to create your account and connect it to All in One SEO.
Once that’s done, you can click on the robot icon again.
This will generate 5 meta description suggestions.
You can select the meta description you want by clicking on the ‘+’ button. Then, it will be automatically added to the meta description field, where you can tweak it according to your needs.
Adding Meta Keywords to Your Post or Page Using AIOSEO
To add your meta keywords, you need to click the ‘Advanced’ tab for your AIOSEO settings.
Simply type in your keywords and press ‘Enter’ after each one. It’s important to only use keywords that are relevant to your content. Adding irrelevant keywords will not give you any SEO benefits.
Tip: Meta keywords are completely separate from your focus keyword. You can set a focus keyword under the General tab so you receive recommendations about improving your content. The focus keyword doesn’t automatically become a meta keyword for your post or page.
Adding Keywords and a Meta Description for Your Homepage
You can also add meta keywords and a meta description for your website’s homepage in WordPress. Here is how to do that using All in One SEO.
First, go to Search Appearance » Global Settings in your WordPress admin. Then, scroll down to the Home Page section.
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 your meta description by default. You can leave that in there, or you can customize it.
You can also click on the other options to add those tags to your meta description. Alternatively, you can add different tags by typing the ‘#’ character in your meta description, as described above.
Tip: It’s better to use these tags rather than manually typing your site title, tagline, or separator character. This is because your meta description will automatically be updated if you later make changes to any of those.
Make sure you click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page after adding your meta description and keywords.
Adding Keywords and Meta Descriptions to WordPress Category and Tag Archives
You can also add keywords and descriptions to your category and tag archive pages.
First, you need to visit the Posts » Categories page. Take your mouse over to the category you want to edit, and then click on the ‘Edit’ link.
Next, you should scroll down on the category’s page to the AIOSEO Settings box.
Here, you just need to enter a meta description for your category. Again, you can use All in One SEO’s tags within this if you want to.
To add keywords, simply click on the ‘Advanced’ tab like you would for any post or page.
Make sure you save the changes to your category before moving on.
Your meta description and keywords will now be used for the category page, which is the archive of posts in that category.
You can repeat the process to add meta keywords and descriptions to your blog’s 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 descriptions for your WooCommerce product pages, SeedProd landing pages, MemberPress course pages, and more.
Bonus: Track Your Keyword Performance with All in One SEO
Want to know how effective your keywords are? All in One SEO doesn’t just let you add keywords in WordPress, it helps you track their performance too.
With All in One SEO’s Search Statistics and Keyword Rank Tracker feature, you can easily see how your chosen keywords are ranking in search results, right from the WordPress dashboard.
This includes valuable information like keyword position, clicks, average click-through rate, impressions, position history, and much more.
By tracking these metrics, you can see what’s working and what’s not. This will help you adjust your keyword strategy so that you can improve your rankings and drive more traffic to your site.
For more details, see our guide on how to check if your blog posts are ranking for the right keywords.
Expert Guides on WordPress Meta Data
We hope this article helped you learn how to easily add keywords and meta descriptions to your WordPress posts and pages. You may also want to see some other guides related to adding metadata in WordPress:
- How to Display Blog Post Meta Data in Your WordPress Themes
- How to Customize WordPress Excerpts (No Coding Required)
- How to Add Custom Meta Boxes in WordPress Posts and Post Types
- How to Add Custom Meta Fields to Custom Taxonomies in WordPress
- How to Add Facebook Open Graph Meta Data in WordPress Themes
- What Is rel=”noopener” in WordPress? (Explained)
- How to Hide a WordPress Page From Google
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Olaf
Since I started using SEO plugins (first Yoast SEO and then AIO SEO), I’ve realized how simple and enjoyable SEO can be in WordPress. Adding meta descriptions to individual content with AIO SEO is really intuitive and creative. It’s great how it also keeps track of the keywords in what you write in the description. I didn’t want to say it for a long time, but I truly believe that an SEO plugin is a must-have that every WordPress site should install among its first plugins.
Hema
Can someone please let me know if AIOSEO plugin is free to use? When I try yo open an account with them, it tells me to subscribe to their paid plan.
Thank you
WPBeginner Support
The plugin is free to use, the simplest way to find the free version would be to go under Plugins>Add New and search for AIOSEO. That should allow you to Install and then activate the plugin on your site
Admin
Dennis Muthomi
You said that Google uses the submitted meta descriptions around 30% of the time, for the other 70%, does editing the meta description serve any purpose if Google changes it anyway in the search results?
WPBeginner Support
It helps Google understand what the content of the post/page is so it can appear in search results and be modified if users ask a question that is close and could be answered with a mild change to your description.
Admin
Caroline
Thanks for sharing this informative blog.
WPBeginner Support
You’re welcome
Admin
Amit
Hey
Before Commenting, I want to say thank you for providing this great information. I feel too good to read this awesome blog.
I have one question about meta title and descripton.
What could be the reason behind Google displaying an incorrect meta title and description?
WPBeginner Support
Glad you found our blog helpful!
For the title and description, if they are set properly on your site and Google has crawled it then it could be Google changing it for the specific search that the user has done to be more relevant to the user.
Admin
Ram E.
The meta title and description, especially the latter, are not directives to Google. While you can set them however you like, Google may change the final description if it thinks it’s best for the user. It’s best practice to write a meta description that can boost CTR, but you don’t have to do it seriously for every page of your site.
Mike Simpson
Please explain why this article seems to be about “All in One SEO” yet most comments are about Yoast? It makes no sense. What happened?
WPBeginner Support
An older version of this article was done using Yoast, after Yoast removed the feature we updated our article to show how to do so using All in One SEO
Admin
Andy
On many sites I read about how to write seo-title correctly, but in many respects the situation remained not very clear to me. After reading your article, I received all the answers to the questions that interested me. Thank you, now I can use this information for my site.
WPBeginner Support
Glad our guide was helpful
Admin
Chelsea
Thanks for this! By chance, are you using the paid version of AIOSEO? I’m not able to edit the meta description or titles for my categories or tags. It says I need to upgrade. Thanks!
WPBeginner Support
Yes, we are using the paid version in our guide.
Admin
Joe
You need to point out that this is only available with the premium service.
WPBeginner Support
Unless we hear otherwise, this tool is no longer available on any version of Yoast.
Admin
Dian Pramono
how to use meta keyword tag in Yoast seo Premium 14.2?
WPBeginner Support
Yoast has currently removed this setting and we will update this article once we found a replacement we would recommend
Admin
Totti
Hi, Could you recommend me another method for adding meta keywords in wordpress because Yoast SEO doesn’t support this option anymore?
WPBeginner Support
We do not have a recommended alternative at this time.
Admin
Daleen
I’m sorry
I don’t have the advanced settings pages under seo features on my site for some reason. How can I implement this tutorial?
Thanks
WPBeginner Support
Apologies for any confusion, at the moment Yoast has removed meta keywords from their plugin, we will look to update the article should we find an alternative we would recommend
Admin
Richard Clemmer
Thank you so much for this blog. It helped me A LOT
WPBeginner Support
Glad our article was helpful
Admin
Jose
Thanks for the article. Useful.
Jose
WPBeginner Support
Glad our article was helpful
Admin
Sirah Maja
I don’t find “Homepage” button like tutorial
WPBeginner Support
Apologies for any confusion, at the moment Yoast has removed meta keywords from their plugin, we will look to update the article should we find an alternative we would recommend
Admin
Hen
Yoast doesn’t look anything like this any more
I think you have to pay for it to get it looking like this. Boo.
WPBeginner Support
Yoast has changed its interface since this article was last updated, this is not the paid version of the plugin.
Admin
Rebecca
I’m using version 12.5 of Yoast SEO and it doesn’t resemble anything like the stages in this tutorial. Is it possible to get tutorial updated to the newer version of Yoast SEO.
WPBeginner Support
We will look into updating our articles as we are able, at the moment Yoast has removed meta keywords from their plugin
Admin
Andrew
HI, I think you need to update all your Yoast related articles, as the plugin has been updated since many of your articles/instructions were created.
WPBeginner Support
Thank you for letting us know, we will certainly take a look at updating our articles as we are able
Admin
Piyush Saini
really nice information thanks for the same but sir can you please tell me how to add more 50+ keyword for a single domain because im struggling with the same. please share the link for the same.
thanks in advance
WPBeginner Support
If you want to add keywords to each article then you would manually go through each article and add them
Admin
uday
now a days are meta keywords still working??
WPBeginner Support
Yoast has removed meta keywords since the last update of this article due to search engines not using them for rankings anymore
Admin
Zoe
Is there any way to create a meta description without using Yoast?
WPBeginner Support
Yes, there are, we just recommend Yoast as it is a beginner-friendly solution
Admin
Didier
Hi! I recently add YOAST in mi site, but it not adding metatag in the header of the page / post. Do you have any idea why it does not work? Or how could validate that its working
WPBeginner Support
Have you cleared all of the caching that is active on your site?
Admin
Rianne
Hi! My Yoast SEO looks totally different. It doesn’t have the meta+ titles tab. I have problems with setting the description for my homepage. Anyone who can help??
WPBeginner Support
Yoast has updated their interface since this article was created and have removed the meta keyword.
Admin
Rianne
So, it is no longer possible to add the meta description for your homepage?
WPBeginner Support
The meta description for your home page would be set in the Search Appearance section of Yoast’s settings
sadaf
how to update meta tage in description page while there is no option
WPBeginner Support
We do not have a recommended method at the moment, Yoast removed the meta keyword option as they say at the moment it does not affect ranking.
Admin
Chitra
Is that not possible to add meta description in wordpress themes without Yoast ?
WPBeginner Support
Without using a plugin you would be required to edit the theme files normally to add that content. That’s why we recommend this method
Admin
Surendar
How long yoast seo take time to update meta description in google??
WPBeginner Support
That would depend on Google, you can request Google recrawl a url to attempt to force the update
Haroon elahi
Great information!
Also write an article on ” upload Meta and Description file upload in FTTP”
WPBeginner Support
Thank you, we’ll certainly look into other post ideas such as that one.
Admin
chika
is this a premium YOAST? because i cant find this setting in mine but mine isn’t premium.
WPBeginner Support
If you mean the keywords then that would be because it was removed after we created this article. The meta description if not below your content, you should be able to click the three dots in the top right of your editor to bring up the option in the block editor.
Admin
Aaditya Sharma
yoast plugin removed keyword add option, now how I can add keywords in page or woocommece products? any plugin or idea
WPBeginner Support
Unless I hear otherwise, we do not have a recommended method/plugin at the moment.
kiya
Titles & Metas not showing under the SEO…..how can i do it now
WPBeginner Support
Yoast no longer offers meta keywords with their plugin but you should still be able to click the title in your Yoast section of the post to allow you to edit it.
Admin
Ashok Punetha
Titles & Metas not showing under the SEO
WPBeginner Support
With the recent updates with Yoast, you would want to click the snippet preview in your post editor to bring the edit options up.
Admin
Kaushik Bhatnagar
Sie,
Ita s very good knowledgeable article. I was actually searching for “Adding Keywords and Meta Description for Homepage”
There are infinite articles but failed to exhibit in pictorial form. Here it made me to understand very easily.
A million dollar thanks to you.
Mike Davis
This doesn’t work anymore. The very clever folks at Yoast disabled the keyword feature as of v 7.2
Personally, I think this is a function that does have value. Even if the search engines don’t use it, a couple rank tracking proggies I use do, but whatevs.
I rolled back to the earlier version.
I won’t ever buy Yoast SEO Premium. Too many updates, and the recent updates require too much babysitting.
James Emmanuel
You are very right. Please can you share on how to roll back to previous version? I like to do same on our website.
Chris
Can you use Wordpress Custom Fields and make them into SEO containers? The descriptions on pages and the keywords for those are important to Google because Google creates scores on your ads based on whether or not the keywords in your ads match the keywords on the landing page. I would think instead of using an SEO plugin we could just easily create custom fields and produce the same thing on a page by page and site by site basis including categories and tags – no?
Powell Nwoke
My snippet is not displaying my post contents as usual, rather its showing, “Please provide a meta description by editing the snippet below.” How do I rectify it? Thank you
Paul Gleave
The meta keywords feature has been removed from Yoast (in April 2018), for anyone looking for it now. This is because the meta keywords tag is no longer used by search engines.
Luke Harper
Thanks! What’s important for SEO now then?
Lisa Michels
I am really trying to follow the instructions but the version of Yoast SEO that I downloaded only has three tabs. Dashboard/Features/Webmaster
I watched the video and read the instructions multiple times. Please help!
Raj
Are you able to see ‘Search Appearance’ link below SEO and that will lead to some of the tabs mentioned in the article. Looks like article is bit old, but we can look for similar tabs/links in the SEO section of the WP area
Dheeraj
Great Article !
Please also post article related to news website.
Like How to create hindi news website? & How to do SEO of any news website?
Thanks
Abhishek Verma
Hello WPBeginner,
There is no option available for Title & Meta’s for Homepage in latest update of Yoast Plugin.
Please guide me.
Thanks.
Aman
Hi,
Yoast Plugin is not showing Meta keyword template in Titles & Meta -> Homepage.
Now, How can I add Meta Keywords In my website?
Rohan singh
Hi,
Yoast Plugin is not showing Meta keyword template in Titles & Meta -> Homepage.
Now, How can I add Meta Keywords In my website?
Maikaal Hydr
Simply Outstanding…..I was kinda looking such tutorial from long time, at last i got it from YOU ./….Thanx Buddy
Dolan Yok
Can you give me an answer, how best to avoid duplicate content, from images, tags, and desktops page 2 and so on
Deepak Yadav
Thanks for writing this helpful articles it helps me too much.
Riyaz
What is better? Using Meta tags, or using Yoast plug in. Also, can I know if Wordpress is HTML, HTML5 or XHTML..
Help is much appreciated.
Bradley B
Nailed it! Thank you.
Iqbal Hussain
How to add
using yoast seo plugin. I have installed yoast seo plugin in my blog but it don’d have this feature.
Iqbal Hussain
meta name revised
Kerry
Curious why you recommend using Meta Keywords? Even Yoast – as used in your example, says keywords are dead. (Thus why they advise you not bother, right on the page where you enable them?
WPBeginner Support
Hi Kerry,
Many SEO experts believe that meta keywords are not useful anymore. We do not agree with this. We think that they can still be useful and are perfectly harmless if used in moderation (i.e. avoid keyword stuffing or using too many meta keywords in each article).
Admin
amolkarde
in SEO only one focus keyword use and in premium version how many keyword use…Thanks for the meta keyword info.
Ayo
Thanks for the post. I tried to set up my homepage description on yoast. The tabs there is unclickable. I tried to click on it several times but isn’t clickable.
Mark Abahi
Thank very much I love it
febrifahmi
Hi, Sir! Thank you for the brief and easy to follow step by step explanation on adding keywords to WordPress. It’s really helpful for me as a beginner. By the way, i already used Yoast SEO plugin for my site. But i still have a question about how can we know what is working and what is not in our SEO setting, or how we measure the performance of our SEO setting from outside? Thanks!
WPBeginner Support
Hey febrifahmi,
The simplest way to measure the success of your SEO score to see if your site has started ranking for the keywords you are targeting. If those keywords have more competition, then initially you may not appear on the first or even the second page of the search results. However, overtime your ranking will keep improving if you keep following your SEO plan.
Admin