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META Keywords-how many?

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.

komox
Newbie Poster
9 posts since Sep 2007
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There is no set number since the search engines don't use that meta tag to rank sites. Put as many as you feel you need and put them in order of importance.

stymiee
He's No Good To Me Dead
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3,360 posts since May 2006
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I limit myself to 10, don't put to much effort here, you can spend your time elsewhere and get more trafic. Good content is the key.

Devilsown
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32 posts since Nov 2006
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I think you can find the top 10-15, but I agree with stymiee, definitly put them in order of importance.

But it definitly is going to take more than keywords. Dont forget other important site elements when building your site!

Estreetloans
Junior Poster in Training
50 posts since Mar 2007
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IMO 8-10 keywords are fine. It should be a good combination of the important, less and more competitive keywords.You can't take all 10 keywords which are highly competitive.

WebDave
Junior Poster
136 posts since Sep 2007
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meta keywords can be limit to 10 - 12 keywords ther must not be more repeation of same phrase in one certain line then it will good but most of search egnine are ignoring meta tag they onely take description's

david_123
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well, I don't consider the "keyword" tag in META tags placement.

But yes, description tag would be useful and even shows it in website rankings.

Still, if you want to use the keyword tag; then place your most targeted keywords used for the web page.

neuronimbus
Junior Poster
131 posts since Aug 2007
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Meta Keywords really have no bearing on rankings nowadays. That's because people used to use them so often to spam the search engines that the algorithm no longer focuses on keywords.

That said, it doesn't hurt to have a few, but don't exceed about 170 characters or so.

tamar
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Team Colleague
48 posts since Nov 2007
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While meta tags really don't count towards much, they are so simple and easy enough to implement that there really is no reason not to do so. Spend the five minutes. The search engines are really cracking down on keyword stuffing (both in page content and meta tags) and future algorithms might be able to correctly (gasp!) differentiate appropriate keywords from black hat ones, and more weight might be put on them in the future. Likely? No. But for something that takes no more than 5 minutes, you might as well.

cscgal
The Queen of DaniWeb
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Yes i agree with CSCgal just spare five minutes on meta keywords and try use them also



regards
seomaster

david_123
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78 posts since Sep 2006
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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. _________________ garden fountains waterfalls Best Offset Mortgage


Select the best top 10 keywords. Keywords count actually does not affect your seo score...backlinking is more important..

silveraden
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50 posts since Nov 2007
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Yes Scorring backlinks with different title text is important for google search engine to improve your ranking in google especially


thanks
seomaster

david_123
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There is no set number since the search engines don't use that meta tag to rank sites. Put as many as you feel you need and put them in order of importance.


Agree, but some SEs still consider this meta thing...Focus more on contents and link build (gather more IBLs)...

cooluks
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43 posts since Jun 2007
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There is no set number since the search engines don't use that meta tag to rank sites. Put as many as you feel you need and put them in order of importance.

A little history/reality check ...

Meta tags are used exclusively by search engines. The original major search engines (that's back in 1994/95) created them and the newer search engines, including Google, adopted the legitimacy of Meta data.

The major search engines read all meta tags. As a matter of fact, they read every single line of code that they can find within a web page in their effort to determine what the web page is all about and if the content is important enough to rank highly amongst other web pages of similar content.

The Meta Keyword Tag is always considered by the search engines.

Until the major search engines themselves declare Meta tags obsolete, it is most wise to keep using them as they provide additional indicators as to what the web page is all about and what the search engines should rank for.

canadafred
SEO Consultant
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1,021 posts since Feb 2006
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Hello canadafred,


I agree with you excellent post you have done yes still some search engine meta keywords also considered to what the web page all about and how it's different from the similar web page and where to rank them in search engine for this purpose they play an important role for search engine's as my view also


regards
mallikarjun
www.directorywala.com

david_123
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78 posts since Sep 2006
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A general rule for the keywords meta tag is to never use words that do not appear on the page.

None of the major search engines have used the keywords meta tag since the 1990s.

TopDogger
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87 posts since Aug 2005
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From my experience, it is normally not very effective to have a lot of different keywords for any one webpage. Each webpage should have a single theme in order for it to get love from search engines, and that theme should be belted out in the title, meta tags, and on-page text, as well as in the anchor text of backlinks. So my opinion is 10 keywords is too many: go for 1-3 and stick to a single keyword theme for each page.

If your business has so many different keywords that are relevant to it, then you might want to consider creating a page on your site dedicated to each one, so that you can really push each one individually. That's my feeling about it.

ericfromandys
Light Poster
38 posts since Jan 2008
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there are small engines etc. that use them so the added time will pay off... just don't think it makes a huge difference... I usually just duplicate the title tag... three phrases per

AussieWebmaster
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53 posts since Dec 2007
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SE's keep changing their algorithms quite frequently and you never know when they will again start to give importance to keyword meta tag, My point of view is one should target 8 to 10 keywords of similar category than using them all different on one single page.

Dev-SEO
Newbie Poster
3 posts since Feb 2008
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IMHO, the major search engines are not likely to ever to use the keywords meta tag again, primarily due to the widespread abuse of this tag in the 1990s. People used to stuff literally hundreds of unrelated keywords into this tag on every page.

At one point, the most common keyword found in the keywords meta tag was the word "sex", which was said to be the word most commonly used in web searches.

The spider algorithms have become very good at determining keyword themes for web pages. The keywords meta tag was a precursor to this.

TopDogger
Junior Poster in Training
87 posts since Aug 2005
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This article has been dead for over three months

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