Search engine giant Google have done away with a facility that feels like it’s been around forever – Content Keywords.
The site crawler feature used to be the only way that Google was able to crawl a website for search relevance, as well as a way of determining whether a site had been hacked or not (which manifested in a result showing a raft of irrelevant keywords).
But recent Google tool refinements have rendered the need for the old system – which often confused users with the keywords that used to come up as content keywords – redundant.
Search Analytics and Fetch/Render do a better job of listing which keywords a site has been listed for; Google’s integrated systems will automatically update you if a hack rears its head; and all of this is neatly integrated into the leaner, more efficient Search Console.
However, Google reminds webmasters that keywords and phrases still play an invaluable role in maintaining good SEO.
“The words on your pages, the keywords if you will, are still important for Google’s (and your users’) understanding of your pages. While our systems have gotten better, they can’t read your mind: be clear about what your site is about, and what you’d like to be found for.”
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