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[SmartCrawl Pro] Keep a better eye on the SEO industry

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This is an announcement from 2012 to introduce the News Keywords which were used by Google:

https://searchengineland.com/up-close-using-the-news-keywords-tag-for-google-news-140552

But this is a more recent announcement (Feb 2018) that the News Keywords are no longer being used by Google.

https://searchengineland.com/google-drops-support-meta-news-keywords-tag-292493

Please look into deprecating the News Keywords feature from SmartCrawl SEO meta tags.

Please note, that is now old news but SmartCrawl doesn't seem to be aware of it. I'm hoping someone can be assigned to keep more in tune with the SEO industry itself. SmartCrawl provides many guides for crafting content for SEO, but outdated rules cause us to spend a lot of time getting SmartCrawl to like content which might be perceived very differently by Google. This translates to a waste of our time and is fundamentally opposite to the purpose of our investment in WPMU DEV. So, like Defender with security, SmartCrawl needs to be tuned more frequently for industry trends. Here's another Feb 2018 article that discusses how things are changing:

https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/02/26/are-keywords-still-relevant-to-seo-in-2018/

In a perfect world (for our purposes) I'd like to see an SEO "state of the art" article in the WPMU DEV blog every 4-6 months, with notes that detail how SmartCrawl is changing to adapt to then-current trends. Even if there are no new trends to prompt changes in SmartCrawl, let us know. THAT would be a great way to continue getting the message out about why people should stay current with their WPMU DEV membership.

Thanks

Sat, 21 Jul 2018 19:38:31
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  • Nastia
    • Ex Staff

    Hello Tony G

    Hope you’re doing well!

    There are no future plans to remove the News Keywords meta field. Google indeed announced that meta keywords are dead, however, Bing search engine still requires them, and Bing search is used by 23% of internet users. Meta descriptions and keywords on Bing, can have a big impact on search ranking.

    Even if not used anymore by Google, meta tags, when used properly can still be useful in a number of areas outside just ranking pages e.g. to improve click-through rates from the SERP.

    I’ve forwarded your request to our developers for their consideration and I forwarded your request to our blog writers to have more SEO related articles :slight_smile:

    Have a good day and take care!

    Kind regards,

    Nastia

  • Tony G
    • Mr. LetsFixTheWorld

    Nastia – I must admit – I was wrong on this and you are entirely correct. I have no idea if Bing, Yahoo, or any other engines are using the News keywords, but the rest of them are still completely valid. There’s no good reason to make any changes in this area now.

    Thanks for passing this on to others despite my misperceptions. :slight_smile:

    I’m withdrawing this request and will look forward to more insight in the blog.

  • James Farmer
    • Founder & Chair (honest)

    Hahah, Nastia beat me too it.

    The blog is an interesting one, I (personally) am not that keen on ‘How to SEO’ articles as that’s not our #1 area of expertise and there are a *heap* of better sites out there for that.

    However, we are pursuing a bunch more content (and courses) about how effectively configure and use SmartCrawl so that it turns your site into as highly atuned technical machine as possible.

    • Tony G
      • Mr. LetsFixTheWorld

      James Farmer, that’s where I was heading with that – a cut above the pedestrian How To SEO :zzz: which could be pitched as “this is the state of the art of SEO now, and this is how our tools are keeping up”. If there’s no news, then there shouldn’t be a new article of this ilk.

      FYI, I just spent about 20 hours on a small House For Sale site for a friend. There’s only four pages to this, but I was keenly interested in getting the very best SEO and performance that I could – and entertaining myself with the gamification of trying to get better scores with each new effort. Seriously though it was very educational and I did this as an investment in the craft. Most of my time was spent in the nuances of SmartCrawl and Hummingbird. I’ve learned a great deal, a bit of which I translated into postings here. But all the while I was thinking “I so wish these details could be documented somewhere so that every admin didn’t need to learn these things from the school of hard knocks”. So from the real world to you :smirk: please do keep that energy flowing on documentation and making the best use of your tools.