9 replies to this topic

[metalive]

Hello,
I have tried to find the answer to my question for several weeks now, in 4 different forums, and nobody was able to answer it. Now I've found this great big forum here (a shame that I didn't discover it earlier) and I hope somebody will be able to answer.

OK, I've been using this tool here

[URL deleted as it's not necessary for this conversation.]
...to analyse/identify potential keywords of my site.

It gave me three lists:

- single keywords
- 2-worded keyword phrases and
- 3-worded keyword phrases

Now, in the results, these words achieved top positions:

"metal"
"heavy"
"live"

...and in the 2-worded phrases, these were quite high:

"heavy metal"
"metal live"

Now comes the important question:

Shall my meta-tag be like this:

keywords=metal, heavy, live, heavy metal, metal live,...

...or is this enough/the same:

keywords=metal, heavy, live,...

I hope you understand what I mean?
What is the differnce between single keywords, and keyword phrases?

greetz
L/N

Edited by Jill, 14 December 2003 - 03:59 PM.

[qwerty]

Welcome to the forum, metalive

You searched through four different forums for answers to a question about the keyword meta tag? I have bad news for you... the search engines ignore it, so it doesn't really matter.

But for what it's worth, there are different opinions on whether it's best to separate keywords in that tag with spaces, commas, or both. I don't think it matters much, but in your case, if you separate them just with spaces, you can get the phrases in there without having to put anything in twice: "heavy metal live".

The important thing is using your keywords in your content. But I assume this tool gave you that information based on the content that's already there.

[metalive]

The important thing is using your keywords in your content. But I assume this tool gave you that information based on the content that's already there.

yes, correct.

So that's interesting then. Hmm, the search engines ignore the meta keywords.

Ok, but your're saying, that if I want to enter them anyway, I should just do it like this without commas:

keywords="word word word word word word word word word word word word"

greetz
L/N

[DanThies]

With or without commas, doesn't matter.

[metalive]

aha, ok

if the search engines ignore the keyword meta-tag, what is it actually good for then?

[qwerty]

It's not good for much, but there's no harm in having it there.

I've come across a few sites that use a spider when you request a link from them, and the spider looks at the meta keywords and description. But the major search engines stopped giving it any weight because people abused it. If they wanted lots of traffic for their site and didn't care how they got it, they'd stick something like "sex sex sex" in the keyword tag in the hopes of showing up for searches on that word.

If you want, you can think of it as a way of keeping notes. You decide what keywords a given page is going to target, you put them in the meta tag, then you write the content.

[SearchRank]

I have used it to place common mis-spellings of words that a client wants to target. If no one else is targeting those mis-spelled words, the site may draw traffic when those mis-spelled words are queried in a search engine.

As the others say, it is not that important at all however. That is why when we are optimizing a site, we'll create one keyword meta tag and then just repeat it throughout the site. I prefer word,word,word, etc. but it doesn't really make any difference how you do it. Only those who are not up to date on SEO would argue differently.

[BrianR]

If you want, you can think of it as a way of keeping notes. You decide what keywords a given page is going to target, you put them in the meta tag, then you write the content.

That's how I use the keyword tag now, and the description tag too - writing a 20-25 word summary of the page including all the keywords is a good discipline.

So both tags help me focus on what the content of the page should be, and if one or both of them gets picked up by a search engine, that's a bonus.

BrianR

[SearchRank]

That's how I use the keyword tag now, and the description tag too - writing a 20-25 word summary of the page including all the keywords is a good discipline.

So both tags help me focus on what the content of the page should be, and if one or both of them gets picked up by a search engine, that's a bonus.

The meta description tag is still used by Alta Vista and Inktomi to form the description for a particular page that will appear in the SERPs. Therefore it is still important in a non-Google world to optimize the meta description tag of each page of a web site. While AV may not be all that important anymore, Inktomi is as they power MSN and will soon replace Google results at Yahoo IMO.

[Scottie]

And there are lots of good reasons to see how you are faring in Inktomi these days...