Keywords Separation

should it be comma, or anything

[YuviG]

Hi guys ... i was looking to a website's meta tags what i got is in keywords tag ... keywords are separated by colon (":") instead of commas (",").

so is there any bad or good affect for using colon instead of commas.

thanks

[YuviG]

one more thing i want to cofirm is syntax for keyword meta tag.
I usually use it as:

<Meta Name="Keywords" Content="..."/>

but some people use it as:

<Meta Name="Keyword" Content="..."/>

is "keywords" & "keyword" matters in meta name?
which one is correct?

[jimbeetle]

The meta element [w3.org].

A common use for META to specify a comma separated list of keywords that can be exploited by search engines to improve the specificity of search results:

<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="vacation,Greece,sunshine">

[YuviG]

thanks jimbeetle ... but my queries are ...
1. can we use "keyword" instead of "keywords" in meta NAME property?
2. can we use colons ":" instead of commas "," to separate keywords?

please guide me
thanks?

[Woz]

Even though the Keyword Tag is less effective these days as an optimisation tool, it does make sense to construct it correctly.

Therefor, it would be best to stick to the standard, IE., META NAME="keywords". Otherwise, your keyword tag would be non-standard and thus even less likely to be parsed correctly.

Also, as to delimiters, usually people use either COMMAS or SPACES at the delimiter. The difference is that SPACES separate the string into individual words, whereas the COMMAS separate the string into phrases. EG., "one word another here" would be four distinct words, whereas "one word,another here" would be two distinct phrases. This means you need to be careful with your COMMAS to ensure you are delimiting your phrases correctly, as just one COMMA will mean phrases.

Even so, whether this would actually create any useful SEO effect these days is doubtful and so the distinction is perhaps somewhat academic.

Onya
Woz

[spiritualseo]

it doesn't matter if it is commas or colons as meta keywords tags are worthless by all means. Description tags are the only ones that hold any value if at all..