Meta 'Keyword' Tag
Once thought to be the golden key to high search engine rankings,
the importance of the Meta Keyword tag has dropped dramatically
over the last few years. Although most major engines no longer
make use of the Meta Keyword tag, it is still worthwhile to
include it for the smaller engines that do.
Using the same exact Meta Keyword on every page will get
you nowhere. Each page should have a customized tag that reflects
the content of that page. It's also important to remember
that you should only be targeting a few phrases per page and
that only those targeted phrases should be included in your
tag. (Aim for 8-12 words total.)
There remains some level of debate on the use of commas within
the Meta Keyword tag. I've found that leaving the commas out
provides the most opportunity for multiple phrases with minimal
words. Search engines will read a string of text and will
break that string up into phrases as needed to provide search
results.
Working off of our deli site above, let's consider that Joe
wishes to optimize for the following phrases:
New York City Deli
Deli Sandwiches
Sandwiches & Desserts
If you planned to use commas in your Meta Keyword tag, you
would need to structure the tag as follows:
< Meta Name="Keyword" Content ="New York
City Deli, Deli Sandwiches, Sandwiches & Desserts ">
If you remove the commas and allow the search engines to
break up the text as they see fit, you can cut three words
out of your description, thus upping the keyword density within
the tag. For example:
< Meta Name="Keyword" Content="New York
City Deli Sandwiches & Desserts ">
It should be noted that several search engines are believed
to penalize the rankings of sites that include irrelevant
keywords within these tags. Even if this is not true, remember
that adding the keyword "Brittany Spears" to a site
about Jewish Genealogy is unlikely to either help out your
rankings, or, to bring in targeted visitors.
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