Meta Keywords tag

< meta name="keywords" content="metatags,keywords,description,definition" >

This should be a comma separated list of relevant words for the search engines to index your page. These words should reflect your site's most important theme. Be careful not to repeat the same keyword too often - 3 occurrences is a safe benchmark and this includes word variations. Some engines perceive heavy repetition to be "spamming the index" if used try to use it keywords with phrases without any grammatical errors in it.

Do not use words that are not relevant to your site. Many search engines will blacklist you if you do. Phrases such as "meta tag definition," are considered one keyword. When surfers enter queries into search engines, they will utilize phrases to help narrow down results. So think about the phrases that you would use if you were looking for subject material such as your site has to offer.

Keep your most important keywords and phrases within the first 100 characters of this statement.

Capitalization is not so much an issue as most Internet users tend to use lowercase text when submitting queries, but it may be a consideration when it comes to locality names. This is a difficult aspect to judge as some search engines do not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase and it is easy to go over the 3 word limit by using such variations.

Some search engine optimization professionals use commas between keywords and keyphrases, but others recommend against this practice as it takes up valuable space. As with a number of search engine optimization topics, this is hotly debated so you may wish to experiment.

Wherever possible, try and use a different keyword statement on each page. Due to black hat techniques the keyword tag was not included by Google it was still used by few search engines. Hence, try to utilize it to a great extent.

Search engine optimization and the meta keywords tag:

Long ago in Internet time, the meta keywords tag was very useful in helping pages to win on search engines. Unfortunately, so many unscrupulous webmasters (black hat seo's) have abused the meta keywords tag that search engines have had to de-emphasize their importance. Still, you should not leave the meta keywords tag off your pages.

Meta keywords tags should adhere to the following guidelines: (1) keep your list of keywords or keyword phrases down to 10 - 15 unique words or phrases; (2) separate the words or phrases using a comma (you do not need to leave a space between words separated by commas); (3) do not repeat words or phrases; (4) put your most important word or phrases at the beginning of your list.