Meta keywords

What is the correct format?

[Richie0x]

I know meta keywords aren't terribly important these days, but I'd like to get it right anyway.

Which is the correct one (or which is most effective):

<meta name="keywords" content="Widgets, Red widgets, Blue widgets, Widgets something">

or...

<meta name="keywords" content="Widgets, Red, Blue, something">

So do you have to put each possible search term individually like 'Red Widgets' or could you put 'Widgets' and then follow it with all the other possible words that could come before or after it?

[bufferzone]

Welcome to WebMasterWorld, I’m sure you’ll like it her.

The first thing you need to consider is the number of keywords pr. Page. I never have more then tree keywords pr. Page, that way you can have Widgets on one page, Red widgets on the next, Blue widgets on the third and Widgets something on a forth page, getting maximum benefit form the different combinations.

Next you should know that the keywords in your meta should always match the words in the text on the page. Never have keywords in your meta that you can not find on the text. By dividing up your relevant keywords, you can write optimized text for each keyword individually

[obryen]

Honestly, I don't know if there's a standard formula for this anymore, because so many search engines use so many different math algorithms for page inclusion. Some don't even use META tags at all --- I have a site that I deliberately left the tags out of, but the body content got it ranked within the top 10 at Google for certain keywords.

[encyclo]

In fact you should not use commas at all - just a string of words. Or don't bother, as no major search engine looks at them anyway. I personally feel that the keywords meta tag is simply a waste of bandwidth.

[tedster]

It appears that the new Yahoo search's algorithm does give neta keywords a little bit of a look - just FYI. I agree that it's probably not much, but it isn't nothing.

[sderenzi]

You sound like a confused fellow, exactly like I did just a few days ago. Then I found the freeware program Metty Meta Tag Maker 1.31. This tool has helped me to create the most useful Meta tags to use, it is completely free & best of all saves time.

[bufferzone]

I would definitely advice against the use of automated tools, also meta generators. If you use meta tags, they should be custom made for each individual page according to the content of that page. If you make your keyword analysis properly, you will not have that many relevant keywords to focus on. Letting the relevant keywords guide your content and meta is the way to go, doing it by hand is not that big a job and the results are much better in the long run

[encyclo]

tedster, the news about Yahoo is interesting - I'll take back what I said about not bothering - although I assume as you said that the keywords don't get much weight in this case either.

As for meta tag generators, you usually end up with dozens of completely useless meta tags for location, author, generator and the like, which definitely have no value to anyone, and just push your real content further down the page. If you don't know what the meta tag does, it's best not to bother. The only exception to this is the Content-Type meta tag, which is important to define the character set (if it is not defined elsewhere, like in the HTTP headers):

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">