Meta Tags and Keywords

Where to place

[customdy]

1) Does the Meta Robots tag only go on the index page?

2) Is there a way to hide your Meta tags so that competitors cannot view them?

3) Orginally I used about 15 meta keywords, a repeated
one keyword about 7-8 times. After I learned this could be
considered spaming I changed the meta keywords on my index so that I did not repeat anything more than 3 times. However, months later google ranks my older less important pages higher, if I reduce the amount of times the keyword
is repeated on the older pages then then ranking falls so it appears that the number of times I am repeating the keyword is making a big difference in the rankings. This keyword is always used in conjunction with some other keword.... for example "keyword oranges", "keyword apples",
"keyword pairs". Does this make sense? What is the risk of repeating this keyword in the Meta tags more than 3 times as it appears to improve my ranking I would like to use this?
Thanks
customdy

[RussellC]

1) No, put it on all pages

2) No way to hide them, but it dosn't really matter, they are almost completely useless at this point. Only Inktomi uses them in the algo.

[customdy]

thanks... so regarding #3 there as far as google is concerned there is no concern with repeating a meta keyword more than 3 times.....

Thanks again