Forum Moderators: martinibuster
From what I understand Google does not read the meta tag
In my experience, and unless mine are the only sites in the world which Google does read the meta tags, the tags are extremely important for both Google Adsense and Google SEO.
Generally I use between 10-20 words in both the "keywords" and "Description" tags however some I have as low as 5 words and a few as high as 30.
An important point to note for widget specific pages, in fact a very valuable SEO trick, is to use the same text in the Title Bar, the Description and the Keywords.
Others may disagree with me however I know where my pages are ranked, #1, and I also see the extremely accurate Adsense targeting.
Incidentally and don't forget, if you are an international site, to include translations of those keywords...every little helps.
For example, I uploaded a page a couple of weeks ago for a new widget product which has a 3 word description in English, Italian, French, German and Spanish plus another 10 words...#1 already.
I am relatively new, but so far I hvae no reason to think that G, Y or MSN crawlers are even looking at my keyword meta-tags, and I think we all agree that Adsense does not seem to take them into account either. At the very least the content of the page seems to have a great deal more weight.
edited to add:
OptiRex, it seems I didn't properly read your post before replying, I am sure you know more about it than I do, I will try the keyword/description/title sync thing.
IMO this is because the description tag actually gets displayed by Google and other sites, while the keywords tag is more of a "wish list" of things you'd like to show up for. It's just legitimized hidden text; you could stick any irrelevant junk in there you liked and nobody would ever know the difference.
You can use them but be very very sure that your keyword metatags can live up and support the actual content on particular pages where they appear. If you place many keywords and the length and density of your onpage content does not tally with what is statistically natural, you will get penalized.
Google will read them of course, and check if keywords and content relate. If not, down you go.
At least, I think.
You can use them but be very very sure that your keyword metatags can live up and support the actual content on particular pages where they appear.
Excellent brickwall, I agree, but I have to wonder why people do not complete the tag descriptions correctly when constructing pages?
Laziness? They've been told they don't matter?
Crazy really since if they are done correctly to start off with then they won't need doing in the future.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't have one (I use them on my sites), but I think they are of very slight value, and most likely of no value with respect to AdSense.
A number of times I've searched for terms that appear in the meta keywords tag but do not appear on the page, and invariably the page does not show up in the SERPs. That suggests to me that Google doesn't use it at all.
Be Because of This?
You can use them but be very very sure that your keyword metatags can live up and support the actual content on particular pages where they appear. If you place many keywords and the length and density of your onpage content does not tally with what is statistically natural, you will get penalized.
This is the generally accepted view:
Keyword in keyword metatag: Shows theme - less than 10 words. (Was part of Google Florida OOP) Every word in this tag MUST appear somewhere in the body. If not, it will be penalized for irrelevance. NO single word should appear more than twice. If not, it is considered spam. Google purportedly no longer values this tag, but others do.
Sticky me if you'd like further pretty accurate opinions on optimising.