How to Add Keywords and Meta Descriptions in WordPress

Do you want to learn how to properly add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress?

Meta keywords and descriptions allow you to improve your website’s SEO (search engine optimization) ranking. This means more traffic, leads, and sales for your business.

In this article, we will show you how to add keywords and meta descriptions in WordPress.

Why Add Keywords and Meta Descriptions in WordPress?

Keywords and descriptions allow you to tell search engines more about the content of the posts and pages on your WordPress website.

Keywords are important words or phrases that people are likely to search for to find your content. A meta description is a brief description of what your page or post is about.

Your meta title, description, and keywords show up in Google search results:

Meta keywords and meta descriptions are HTML meta tags. They form part of your website’s header code. They don’t appear on your page or post for visitors to see. However, search engines and browsers can use them.

WordPress SEO tools and plugins make it super easy for you to add them from your WordPress admin area for each post and page on your website.

How Important Are Meta Keywords and Meta Descriptions for SEO?

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

While search engines don’t exactly share how much weight they assign to keywords or descriptions, SEO experts always recommend adding a proper meta description and keywords for on-page SEO optimization.

Meta descriptions are widely used by search engines. In Google’s search results, they appear below your content’s title, with the search term shown in bold.

An effective meta description will encourage users to click through and read your post content. And we know that a good click-through rate means Google will likely rank your content higher.

When it comes to meta keywords, most modern search engines either assign very little importance or don’t use them at all. The main exception is the Russian search engine Yandex.

Instead, search engines prefer that you add your focused keywords in your title, description, and throughout your content. This is why SEO plugins like AIOSEO come with a TruSEO score that helps you optimize your content for focused keywords and keyphrases.

Our Recommendations for Meta Keywords and Meta Descriptions

We recommend adding a meta description for all the posts and pages on your site, including your homepage, category pages, and tag pages.

When it comes to meta keywords, it’s up to you whether or not to use them. They will not harm your site, but they may not be of much benefit either.

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

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.

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.

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.

Expert Guides on WordPress Meta Data

Now that you know how to add keywords and meta descriptions, you may like to see some other guides related to adding meta data 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

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 our guide on how to create an email newsletter or our expert picks for the best WordPress contact form plugins.

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