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Although they do not play as much of a role as they used to, there are many things that should be considered. I wouldn't use more than a few (2-5) top keywords or phrases to a page. Make sure that you don't use duplicate keywords. The main key is having good keyword density, and having the keywords placed throughout the page. It is also good to have them in the text links, file names, image names, directory names, and it is very good to have the top keyword in the domain name.
All these things can help with the SE's, and there is so much more to it than this. There are certain limits that should not be exceeded.
I would start reading in the forums......there is alot to learn here.
Happy reading, and Welcome to WebMasterWorld!
It depends what you audience you are targeting.
The use of rock, rocks, and the rock, is totally legitimate, and done by many.
Just make sure that you do not use any keywords that are not in the content of the page, and that are not in the title tag.
Here are a couple of recent threads that might help.
I just noticed that the person asking most of the questions in the second thread I posted was you. That thread was started only a couple of months ago. In this thread, You are the one providing most of the answers.
I just wanted to take a moment to acknoledge your efforts of late. You've been putting in alot of time around here, and it shows.
Any examples ?
Does arrangement, to give posible phrases make a difference ?
P.S. - you guys are great! Thanks for all your help - I'm going to be spending a lot of time around here from now on! :)
Thank you for noticing, as it is good to see that alot reading, studying, and hard-work are strating to pay off. I should definitely not get all of the credit, as it is everyone else here that has been teaching me.
That is what I love about this place: learning all of the new things, and then being able to turn around and dish out the same courteous, knowledgable help.
>>>>Can someone explain the idea of leaving out the comas between key words or phrases in the keyword metatag and how this can increase rankings.>>>
There is debate over this, but the general concensus that is felt is that the practice of not putting in comas is bad
>>>>>So if I have a meta keyword that does not appear in the content of the page, will that hurt me?>>>>>
No, that will not hurt you, but it may not help either. It would hurt though if you had 20-30 keywords that were not in the content or relevant to the content.
I'm not sure about that. I personally fall into the "no comma" camp, and I know many other SEO's who also don't comma. I think it probably was more important back in the days when meta tags reigned supreme, but presently, the few that do take them into consideration simply treat them as an additional occurence on the page. A comma is simply an additional space.
1) As Web Guerilla pointed out: the commas only take up more valuable real estate.
2) The SE's can mix and match the keywords, and therefore get more variations.
When I first heard of this I thought that it sounded like an awesome idea, and logical too, but then I was turned off to the idea by someone in the forum.
Maybe it is time to start doing it
No, it doesn't really matter much, but here's why I don't think they are necessary.
By definition, a delimiter is:
"a character that identifies the beginning or the end of a character string (a contiguous sequence of characters). The delimiting character is not part of the character string."
A space is a delimiter. It is used in text to indicate the end of one word and the begining of another. If you use a comma combined with a space to separate words, you reduce the possible number of phrase matches because you have increased the number of delimiters between character strings.
Doing that in a meta tag means that you need to be more repetitive in order to address all possible phrase combinations, and IMHO, meta tag repetition isn't a good thing.
Example:
washington apple pie recipe creates three distinct phrase matches. (two character strings separated by one delimiter).
wasington apple
apple pie
pie recipe
On the other hand, washington, apple, pie, recipe does not. With proximity matching, the number of characters that separate the character strings that were the focus of the query, determine the order in which matches are returned.
For a search on "washington apple"
washington apple is more relevant than washington, apple and
washington, apple is more relevant than
"When I went to Washinton, I ate a great tasting apple.
In order to create the same number of phrase matches using commas, you would need to do something like:
washington apple, apple pie, pie recipe
That addresses the three exact phrases, but it also creates unecessary repetition of the words apple and pie, and it also reduces the chances of matches for secondary phrase matches like
apple pie recipe
or
washington apple pie
Now I guess it's possible that a search engine could ignore spaces within a meta tag. Certainly from a programming standpoint they have the ability to determine what is and is not a delimiter. However, it seems like it would be a bit problematic because they do consider a space a character. If it's not a delimiter, and it's not considered part of the alphabet, how do you account for it?
The compromise between the two theories is to separate your keywords by commas, but leave out the spaces.
something like washington,apple,pie,recipe
I know several people who do this, and they swear by it just as much as both the comma and no comma crowd do. :)
It has confused me, as I have also seen coflicting claims that certain SEs will use up to 1017 characters from the keywords tag. Help?
welcome to WmW, and it is my understanding that it varies from SE to SE, and I do believe that they all have their limitations.
I do not think that any of them go as high as 1000 characters, but I could be wrong.
Even if you could use up to 1000 characters.....I woudn't. IMO
Thanks for the welcome, and the fast reply. I would also tend to agree that 1000 characters is too many, but some clients will insist...
As a point of interest, I saw the info about 1000+ characters here [searchengines.com]. I cant vouch for its accuracy (or currency), but it seems to have some good-to-moderate info organised in a few handy tables throughout the site.
This is a well constructed table, something that I will look at when I get some more time. Good find
That said, you do not have to use all of them.
A couple quick observations regarding the chart you mentioned. Out of all the engines/directories mentioned, the only ones that are listed as even considering the keyword tag are:
AltaVista
Iwon
HotBot
MSN
They mention that they don't count much on AV, but it doesn't hurt to add them. I'd basically agree, but I would add that AV certainly doesn't seem to like large tags, and may very well penalize for using them.
Iwon is presently using GoTo, so that just leaves MSN and HotBot which are both powered by Inktomi, but the chart shows dramtically different character counts for the two. (1017 for MSN and 75 for HotBot?)
The chart also does not mention Fast, (it does mention Lycos which uses fast results, but also runs their own spider)
All in all, I'd say the info isn't that current, but the general thing you should take away from it is that smaller is better. I certainly wouldn't use a thousand characters just for Ink, if doing so may harm you in other places. Especially when you take into consideration the rate at which Ink is losing partners, or having their listings buried underneath directory listings.
Two years ago when I formatted my current site with keyword tags, I put quite a few words in it. I just left it like that as my ranks pretty much stay where they are.
But, with client sites now, I limit the keyword tag to no more than 3-4 keyword phrases. I firmly believe now that less is much more.
I also believe that if the keyword is in the tag, it should be on the particular page.
If 4 phrases I was targeting are:
paris hotels
hotels in paris
eiffel tower
paris france hotels
My keyword tag might be formated like this:
paris hotels france eiffel tower hotels in paris france
I truly believe that you will be found more easily on more combinations of keyword phrases doing it this way.
Great thread!
This might seem like a naive question to some of you but I am unsure of where the spam 'line' actually is:
For example, using the more than 3 reps of a keyword/phrase = Spam rule, what about a phrase repeated more often but used in conjunction with other words to make 'longer' phrases.
e.g.
keywords="belgium hotels, belgium hotels in brussells, 3 star belgium hotels, 4 star belgium hotels, cheap belgium hotels".
I have repeated 'belgium hotels' 5 times in this example. My big question is, would this be considered to be spam???
I don't want to sound hellbent on 'getting away with as much as poss'. Just need to know the boundaries.
Again, sorry if this is a bit obvious.
Regards, Stavs
I will put it like this:
keywords="belgium hotels in brussells 3 4 star belgium hotels cheap hotels".
