Meta keywords are an SEO Consulting dream. Even in the age of the content oriented search engine algorithm, a well rounded set of keywords will help a lot. So often, this never gets done on new websites.
Similar to meta descriptions, meta keywords are another meta tag recognized by the search engines. Instead of sentences, meta keywords are merely a listing of the important keywords for a page. Ideally, words and phrases listed in the meta keywords should also appear multiple times in the text content of that page. This particular meta tag has been extremely abused by optimizers stuffing hundreds and even thousands of words into the tag, whether relevant to
the text content of the page or not. Because of this, search engines do not grant this tag much weight anymore, if any, in ranking the page. However, they do still read the tag as text and it is helpful if the content of the keyword meta tag and the content on the page are closely related. Google seems to ignore this tag, however there is some evidence that Yahoo and other smaller search engines pay a bit of attention to it.
So, let’s take a look at how SEO Consulting Groups make use of meta keywords:
I recommend that the total number of meta keywords be two or three keywords or key phrases per page, separated by commas and spaces. • More is not necessarily better. The more disparate the keywords, the lower the potential page ranking. Don’t water down your most important keywords by including less important ones with it. • Use keyword phrases that are also used in the copy of the page, the title tag, meta description, and other tags. If a key phrase is not mentioned anywhere on the page, it should not be included as a meta keyword. Remember relevance! • Don’t forget plurals, assuming people are searching both variations. For example, include both “Donut” and “Donuts” in the keyword meta tag to make sure a page about Donuts shows up in both searches. • If there is a common misspelling or version of a popular keyword that might be used to find the website, it should be included in the keyword meta tag. For example, if a lot of users have typed “Doughnuts” than three times.
• If the website is targeting users in a specific geographic location, be sure to include the location in the keyword meta tag as well as in the text content of the page. Example: “Keyword, Keyword, Keyword, Sydney, Australia”
