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Optimizing Meta Tags - The Keyword Meta-tag The exact syntax of this tag is still being debated, you will see what I mean in a moment. Below is an example of what the keyword meta-tag should look like within your document: <meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, keyword4, etc."> As stated on the previous page, this tag has been the most abused of all. The abuse comes when sites repeat keywords countless times to improve ranking, or denoting keywords which have nothing to do with the actual content of the page but are known popular terms. There has also been some heated debate as to the use of commas and spaces within the list of the keywords. Should keywords be separated by commas? Does this affect the power of the keywords? While people are debating these issues, lets lay down some basic rules which should be followed:  | Keywords listed in the title of your document should also appear within your keyword and description meta-tags, and most important, these words should appear within the content of the page. | | Follow the same rules as those mentioned in creating page titles to decide which keywords to use. | | At all costs avoid repetition of your keywords within a single meta-tag. This does not mean that your word can only appear once on the whole page, this simply means try and not practice spamming techniques such as massive repetition. As a guide try and not repeat a keyword more than 3 times within a tag. More than 5 or 6 times and your attempts may be regarded as spamming with punitive consequences. | | Understand that some search engines regard capitalization differently than others. Some engines may regard keywords which are capitalized as more important. It may be a good idea to include this variation in your list of keywords. Be careful as those which do not care about capitalization may feel that the word has been repeated too many times, thus it is spam. Another thing to keep in mind is that most people search for terms in lower case, except perhaps things we normally capitalize such as state names. | | Include some common misspellings of your search terms where you feel they may be relevant. There is a list of commonly misspelled words here. | | To address the issue about the use of commas lets consider why it is even an issue. When search engines index your pages they have limitations as to the amount of information the spider will log when it visits your site. While the amount or number of characters, any individual spider will index varies we can safely say that the count should be kept to about 200 characters. | | Do not use terms which are irrelevant to the topic of your site. Some site owners try using a term which is popular at the time in hopes of getting higher rankings. For instance if you sell plumbing supplies do not use "Cloning" as a search term. | | Geographic region is quite important also. Keep this in mind when deciding which terms to use. | | Try and create phrases out of your keywords, do not just list them. | | Because each page on your site may have a different focus, you may need to use different sets of keywords. While this is fine, do not forget to include the overall topic of your site within these words. | Keywords: Are more less or are more, more? The debate is: Do I include the largest number of keywords allowed (usually about 200 characters), or do I drill down and specifically denote only those which are most relevant? The answer to this is not absolute. The results vary. The best approach to this is to do it one way, analyze your rank, if its no good, try the other. Lets move on to discuss Optimizing the Description Meta-Tag. Next Page > |
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