repetition in keyword submissions

newbie question: TV vs. Television

[melbeanie]

I'm putting together metatags for a site about TV show picks. Here's the trouble... I've read conflicting advice about the # of permissible keywords in metatags, and the repetition that is permissible. What I DON'T want to do is spam our homepage; but it is critical that i include tv picks, television picks, tv listings, television listings, and other variants. I do know that TV is a more popular term than television. There are also many variants of the phrasing that I want to include.

I came up with a 600 character keyword list, and TV and television are both mentioned several times. Is that overkill? Is it really true that I should have <5 keywords in the homepage metatags?

[jdMorgan]

I'm no SEO expert, but yeah, 600 characters is kind of long.
Many (if not most) search engines now disregard the meta keywords tag, so rather than trying to put every possible combination of every possible variant of "TV Listings" in your keywords tag, just put the ones you think are most popularly-used as Headers (the "<h3></h3>" tag, for example) for those sections of your page. Search engines look for headers, and give them a bit more weight than plain-text.
The quickest way to lose your sanity is to "sweat" the keywords - just put a few of the keywords and phrases that real people will use when searching for your information, and don't try to figure out ALL the possible
variations.
Once your site has been up for a few months, you can review your access logs and find out what keywords people are actually using to find you. Then you can make an informed decision on whether you may want to re-arrange your keyword list.
Years ago when keywords were actually used by SEs, repeating any keyword more than 3 times was a good way to get your listing dropped from their indexes. But now, only AltaVista seems to pay much attention to keywords, and no-one seems to be using AV much anymore - so again, don't sweat it!
Hope this helps,
Jim
(Finally recovered after many years of attending "Keywords Anonymous" meetings)

[jdMorgan]

Also, there's some more discussion of repeats here [webmasterworld.com].

<Fixed link ~Marcia>

(edited by: Marcia at 10:07 pm (utc) on April 26, 2002)

[JamesR]

I would forget about the meta tags and work it into your content.

There is no way that many variations will show up on the search engines for one page.

Use the theme pyramid scheme in this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

to use your entire site to target the words you want.

[melbeanie]

Thanks, everyone, for the responses. I'm radically paring down the keyword numbers.