META Keywords--how many?

[Martina]

About how many META keywords should you use? There are so many that relate to my business but I don't know how many is too many. Advice would be appreciated.

___________________________
Home tanning bed Play Online Games

[manageyourlinks]

I dont think meta keywords are even a meta tag that search engines even look at anymore.

[Diddy1]

Originally Posted by manageyourlinks

I dont think meta keywords are even a meta tag that search engines even look at anymore.

Actually they do look at the meta keywords. The meta description is almost always ignored however, especially by google. And if I remember this right keywords can contain up to 250 characters.

Thank You

[Webfu]

Its true SE's look at meta but it doesn't appear to be a factor that weighs in heavily for SEO these days. You can leave meta tags out of a web page and rank just as well.

[martyan]

Immediately after people realized that meta tags could allow a page to be found more relevant in the major search engines, unscrupulous people began abusing the tags by passing keywords that had little or nothing to do with the content of their sites, and the search engines began to reduce using that content for a keyword association ranking factor because it couldn’t be trusted. Eventually, search engines pretty well dropped using them for ranking altogether and newer search engines didn’t bother to use them at all, leading Danny Sullivan to declare the death of the metatags in 2002. The source is naturalsearchblog.com

[vistadivine.com]

Originally Posted by Diddy1

Actually they do look at the meta keywords. The meta description is almost always ignored however, especially by google. And if I remember this right keywords can contain up to 250 characters.

Thank You

No you are wrong its the description tags which are still important not the keywords tag they are not even given any importance.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by vistadivine.com

No you are wrong its the description tags which are still important not the keywords tag they are not even given any importance.

Although I certainly wouldn't make it a huge priority, it is incorrect to assume that ALL search engines totally disregard the keywords meta tag.

Listed in the Yahoo help files, under how to improve the ranking your web site in the search results --

Use a "keyword" meta-tag to list key words for the document. Use a distinct list of keywords that relate to the specific page on your site instead of using one broad set of keywords for every page. http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/ranking/ranking-02.html

[Dotster]

I think it depends. What sphere of business are you present? My IMO is 3-4 keywords per page

[googlesuccess]

Try the metatag analyzer tool at submitexpress.com/analyzer/
It recoomends the lenght for every tag and will flag errors when any of the tag is wrongly used.

[Webfu]

Originally Posted by martyan

Eventually, search engines pretty well dropped using them for ranking altogether and newer search engines didn’t bother to use them at all, leading Danny Sullivan to declare the death of the metatags in 2002. The source is naturalsearchblog.com

Sounds right to me. Thanks!

[parusa619]

Maybe 3 to 5 keywords is enough, depending on the keywords needed by the site.

[ninjashoes]

Search engines still use Meta Keywords but they analyze them in a different way. They will take a keyword and check to see how many times that keyword appears on your page. If its a totally unrelated keyword then it shouldnt be on the page and will be irrelevent.

I have no idea if Google still does this.

[Blazed]

Originally Posted by manageyourlinks

I dont think meta keywords are even a meta tag that search engines even look at anymore.

They looks ....... They still checks out the description

[WagerX]

I was penalized in yahoo by having all about 15 pages with the same meta tag desriptions. I used to think that search engines didn't take them into consideration. I think that still holds for most of the engines. I beleive yahoo does take them into consideration.

[ninjashoes]

Originally Posted by WagerX

I was penalized in yahoo by having all about 15 pages with the same meta tag desriptions. I used to think that search engines didn't take them into consideration. I think that still holds for most of the engines. I beleive yahoo does take them into consideration.

wow thats kinda scary if you are using a php type site that has many pages with the same desc

[nasty.web]

Originally Posted by ninjashoes

wow thats kinda scary if you are using a php type site that has many pages with the same desc

Sad, but true. I've also had Yahoo penalty for meta duplicates on very huge site. It was pain in the ass to make them more unique. But afterwards making my all meta more unique solved my problem.

[NothingButNet]

I use about 30 words and it works nicely. But what gets me noticed are the articles I write. Then if someone is searching for me, they get directed to my website.

[Blazed]

Originally Posted by WagerX

I was penalized in yahoo by having all about 15 pages with the same meta tag desriptions. I used to think that search engines didn't take them into consideration. I think that still holds for most of the engines. I beleive yahoo does take them into consideration.

ofcourse you will be panaliserd for this doing it.
Yahoo! and Google will consider as a spam and you will be using the same keywords for having the same description in your meta tags.

[vistadivine.com]

Originally Posted by Blazed

ofcourse you will be panaliserd for this doing it.
Yahoo! and Google will consider as a spam and you will be using the same keywords for having the same description in your meta tags.

No its never going to penalize you he might have been penalized for some thing else he have done.

[la cala]

Is it ok to put stopwords in your keyword phrases i.e. apartments in la cala hills