Meta Keyword Tags

still supported?

[keyplyr]

Hi everyone,

I have seen subtle references, posted here at WebmasterWorld and other groups, concerning the Meta Keywords tag becoming archaic. What's the opinion of this group. Are they still supported by the bots? Do they hold as much leverage as they once did, or are they a waste of time and bytes?

D C

[Brett_Tabke]

<.02>
Meta keywords are on their death bed. There is so little value to them any more, I think the 5nano second download time outweights any benefit. </.02>

I do still use them mostly for smaller and growing topical engines. However, I do the top 5kw's on the page at most.

[TallTroll]

Is it still worth using them to get related words you want to be found under, but don't use explicity on the page? (common misspellings, plurals or just related words you couldn't/didn't work in to preserve KW density, that sort of thing)

[bufferzone]

Since no SE seems to penalize the use of meta tags, I use them, knowing that the effect is declining

[Woz]

Well I have said it before and will say it agaon, I think they are still useful for the smaller niche engines. For example, I do not (as yet) have the technology to extract a page's information for my databases and so still rely on metatags in general.

I think they are still a good habit to keep.

Onya
Woz

[keyplyr]

My top page has grown to weigh in at over 50k, so when I look at what to trim, those 150 (or so) KWs becon "take me, take me!"

I cut out most of the fat and left only several key phrases containing my top ten KWs. Frankly, I never really saw that they did anything at all.

D C

[Robert Charlton]

>>Frankly, I never really saw that they did anything at all.<<

150 keywords would probably confuse things more than help. 10 is more where you want to be.

[bufferzone]

<<10 is more where you want to be.>>

I'd try to stay under 5. The more keywords, the less weight every word has

[Robert Charlton]

>>I'd try to stay under 5. The more keywords, the less weight every word has<<

When I say 10 keywords on a page, I'm not talking about targeting 10 words on a page. I agree... (3 to) 5 is right for that, depending on how competitive the phrases are. When I say 10 keywords, I'm talking about the meta keyword tag.

Way back, Brett's original article on theming talked about limiting the search targets on an entire site to about 10 keywords, and to include those in the meta keyword tag (and thus in the body text) of every page.

An approach that's evolved from that has worked well for me. I focus the entire site to about 10 to 12 prime target words, get those words on every page, and then optimize each of my main target pages for 3 to 5 of those words. My meta keyword tag consists of those prime target words, arranged in prioritized order for each page. It's not quite as cut and dry or simple as this, and a lot depends on competiveness, but this is roughly how I approach a lot of sites.

[ebgreen]

I am having trouble getting ranked in AOL, GOOGLE, and MSN, even though I have quality content, five very good LookSmart listings, and a very, very good ODP listing. I am in a very competitive field, where most of the search terms are single words. However, I have managed 40-60 top 30 rankings on AltaVista just from my index page.

[caine]

ebgreen,

what your saying dosent make any sense, as 5 good directory listings in LS, pretty much is 5 good listings in MSN and the other partners.

your site is listed in google.

if you have got 40-60 top 30 listings in AV from your index page, do you not have any other pages, or are they all product specific pages, maybe the problem lies there.

[ebgreen]

Sorry if what I wrote was confusing. You always respond quickly and I appreciate it. What I meant is that my LookSmart listings are exactly as is my ODP listing. However I am not getting any top 20 or 30 listings in AOL, GOOGLE, and MSN. I used to rank really well in all three and now they have all vanished under the keywords that are important. Also, I did not mean that my only listings in AltaVista came from my index page. All of my pages together probably generate over 100-150 top 20 or 30 listings in AltaVista.

Another question - This punk that lives in the same city as I do heard about how well our business was doing and he went out and copied everything from my website including the domain name minus the 'S' at the end. He is representing his company as ours. He sells things much cheaper than we do. He pays more for his products than we do, so I know he is not making any money, but he is taking away a good portion of our business. Any ideas on how to get rid of this problem?

[caine]

I had a sneaky peek at your site, and i have to say, i train, as in gym, run and have and know a little about biology and nutrition, but your site, is way beyond me, and maybe the search engines, see it that way as well.

A little inaccessable, also what i noticed was a fuzzy targetting for dozens of kw's on the index, rather than a solid base to build the rest of the site around.

I don't know how competitive your area is, but related reciprocal linking can help. Also a more welcoming page to potential customers, rather than an experts index to a-z of products.

Some idea's to mo over

[ebgreen]

thanks for the help.