Meta Keywords

scotty · #1 07-29-2007, 04:46 AM

What's the story on them these days? Some say they are very important for SEO and others say don't bother.

To quote two sources:

Quote:

http://www.pandia.com/optimization/SEO-metatags.html

Google ignores this tag. If you consider the amount of spamdexing (stuffing of Keywords shamelessly into Keyword Tags) it's not hard to figure out that the search engines have to treat this tag with caution.

[In September also AltaVista abandoned the keyword meta tag. This means that Inktomi is the only major search engine supporting this tag. The Editor.]

Quote:

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Import...Tags&id=646256

Meta tags are used to add information to the HTTP header of a webpage. It also contains hidden information in the coding that the search engines will pick up on. Example: author's name, title of web site and "keywords" Meta tags can help improve your placement in search engines and can therefore help increase traffic to your Web site. Most likely, if your site does not have "keywords" in the head of your html code, the engines will not find your website.

So who is correct?

MoonMan · #2 07-29-2007, 05:09 AM

Myths was pretty good

One thing about first article though, nobody wants AltaVista crawler in their website. Most people I know blocks it in their robot.txt because they are very well known email address farmers and spammers. So I don't think anybody would care about Altavista abandoning some tags or such.

Actually both articles has some points. As far as I know, keywords meta tag is good for SEO. But if you stack up too many keywords, most of the search engines will consider it as spam and just ignore them.

Here are the myths I have heard:

Do not use more than 10 keywords.
If title includes some words from both keyword tag and the actual web page it is good for SEO.
Keywords must be separated with commas. Otherwise search engines will see it as one long keyword and ignore it.
If words in your description tag matches the keywords tag and the page content, then it is good for SEO.

Other than that? I really don't care. This is like global warming. Everybody making his/her own propaganda, but nobody can prove anything 100%.

I'd say go with what Google says:
"Do not build website for SEO, build it for your visitors and we will find you eventually".

Pete · #3 07-29-2007, 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MoonMan

I'd say go with what Google says:
"Do not build website for SEO, build it for your visitors and we will find you eventually".

If google says so, that's good enough for me!

Interesting views from both sides though.

demon · #4 08-19-2007, 02:35 PM

I do believe the same. As things changing all the time, you cant always be around and do that kind of changes in the websites. Although search engines are smart enough nowadays to understand that.. Build your site with your needs and the needs of your customers/users in mind and you will not have any problem to be ranked #1

Butler · #5 08-20-2007, 01:43 PM

People say they arenot worth the time.
But i have experienced pretty good listings, but they should be used in correct format and with key phrases and not key words.

I would like to add that with using meta tags you can invite a search engine per hour on your website, for sure.

pawanjot90 · #6 03-24-2008, 10:16 AM

Does meta keywords really help ? Or only getting traffic to your website is the best ?