keywords

[Lucky Lady]

How come you never use commas in your keywords Doug?




[Moved from Google forum. - Jill]

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums Lucky Lady! :hi:

LOL. Who me?

I don't know. Never have that I can remember. None of my clients use them either. You will find about half of seo's use them, other half don't. It's just a preference that really makes no noticeable difference. Besides, the keywords tag is only looked at by Ink and Teoma anyway.

I like to think I am getting a broader range of keyphrase combinations looked at by doing it that way.

[Mhes]

"Besides, the keywords tag is only looked at by Ink and Teoma anyway."

...don't forget all the small directories and engines who use them. Small traffic but can add up. Also, if we help all these smaller players it gives the web stability and is one way we can help stop being too reliant on just the big two or three engines. A well indexed site can get 60%+ traffic from Google which is great but scary.

[God2k]

i like the part "getting a broader range of keyphrase combinations looked at" something to think about.

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by Mhes
...don't forget all the small directories and engines who use them. Small traffic but can add up. Ummmm, directories could care less about keywords tags. Any I know of only use what is submitted to them usually Title and description. Keywords are taken by a few but they aren't the variety you want to spend a lot of time on. Doug makes a good point which I didn't fully comprehend until I started parsing meta tags myself and then realized how strategically placing certain words provides additional matches.

[wheezer]

I stopped using keywords after learning that none of the major engines used them. My SEO emphasis is instead on keyword phrases in the title tags, and writing (hopefully) better copy for the description tag. This emphasis is paying off with top ten rankings in many keyword phrases or combinations, sometimes in the most unexpected places.

I get little or no traffic from Inktomi or Teoma, anyhow, so I now spend no time on keywords. Latest tracker results for my website show Google 67%, Yahoo 25%, AltaVista 2%, everyone else 6%. Not much doing there for Ink or Teoma. It may be because my site is non-commercial.

What's in a word? In my case, there are major differences in results from something as simple as using "art work" (two words) vs. "artwork" (one word) in title tags and text. I found that more people were using "art work" in searches, so I use "art work" in some titles or text and "artwork" in others, to cover both search situations, and this has improved rankings.

And I think a tag line is as important as good title tags and good descriptions.

[Mhes]

"Keywords are taken by a few but they aren't the variety you want to spend a lot of time on"

Directories created by spiders using meta keywords with pr6+ are worth spending time on! It takes all of 20 secs to put in 5 keywords and thats it.

If you don't bother to spend a few seconds to put them in, you could miss out on a few quality links that will raise your own pr. And Google wants to establish 'theming' etc., so supposing as part of the algo it returns to reading the keywords? I know there are people who abuse the tag, but in the grand scheme of things they are heavily outnumbered by people who fill them out sensibly.

SEO is about tomorrow, not what has ranked well in the past. We don't know what the algo will be tomorrow, so for the sake of a few harmless lines of code, keeps the options open.