The META keywords tag

Is there no standard convention for use of the content section?

[sparticus]

Much has been written about the META keywords tag and its relevance (both in WebmasterWorld and elsewhere), but there seems to be no standard convention for its use. W3C.org is vague and ambivalent on what should come in the content section, and even WebmasterWorld's own definition seems inaccurate:

"(The) Meta KEYWORDS tag is used to group a series of words that relate to a website..."

In actual fact, meta tags are there to inform the user about that specific page, not the website as a whole.

I have read much discussion about whether or not the content of the tag should include words that are actually on the page, but to me it seems a no-brainer: the tag is there for webmasters to list a set of 'KEY WORDS' on that particular page - that is, words on the page that are worth highlighting because of their particular importance and relevance to the content.

By very definition, the 'key words' of a given page must be on that page (and remember we're talking about the actual page, not the topic; not the whole website).

To finish with an example: W3C has 'lee' listed as a keyword on its homepage (an obvious reference to Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the world wide web) but 'lee' is really not a key word of that page, and I don't think it should be used as one because it is irrelevant to that page's content.

Am I wrong?

[grandpa]

WebmasterWorld's own definition

"(The) Meta KEYWORDS tag is used to group a series of words that relate to a website..."

That seems to be the approach taken by the W3C site, as you describe it. My own sites take the individual document into account, not the entire site. The same can be said for KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTIONS and TITLES.

The only wrong approach to using Meta Tags is to use them inappropriately. The W3C provides some simple suggestions that will make your documents more accessible to search engines. But remember the real purpose of the Meta Tags is to provide information about a document rather than document content [w3.org]. So simply stated, provide accurate information for the document if you intend to present the information at all.

<add>And when I think about it, Lee is an excellent keyword reference for the W3C home page.</add>

[tedster]

There has been no standard convention -- and historically various search engines have even held opposed views. At one point, when engines were mostly about on-page factors, AltaVista was advising the use of words that are not on the page and at the same time other engines were even penalizing that practice as spam.

Stemming and other semantic practices seem to be taking away a lot of that concern -- as well as the fact that the tag holds little sway these days, anyway, making the whole thing moot.

[sparticus]

Sorry grandpa, I disagree; there's no way 'Lee' is an appropriate keyword for the W3C homepage - there's absolutely nothing about the man on that particular page, and the word 'Lee' is so ambiguous, with so many contexts, I just can't see how it's relevant enough to be a KEY word.