Meta Keywords

The Meta Keywords Tag

The "meta keywords" tag is a meta tag that that was designed to list the keywords from your web page in order to help search engines categorise web pages and websites.

But they were used by many to put in every word they thought would bring in visitors, whether those words were relevant to the page or not!

This "keyword stuffing" brought visitors to websites that had nothing to do with what they were searching for. Consequently most search engines no longer use this tag.

Where to use meta keywords

Meta keywords are placed in the "head" of the page:

<head>
<title>This is the title of the page</title>
<meta name="description" content="Everything you ever wanted to know about this page in 150 characters!" />
<meta name="keywords" content="meta,meta tags,meta keywords,meta keyword tags" />
</head>

The keywords are separated only by a comma: no spaces

How many words to use

  • Just use essential words - they must be words on the page
  • Put the most important keywords first
  • Don't repeat the same phrase
  • Max about 1000 characters

To use or not use meta keywords

These are not used by many search engines now, and there is some debate about whether they have any value at all.

Remember!

  • It's unlikely that meta keywords will make any difference to your search engine rankings
  • If you want to add them, don't spend more than a couple of minutes on them
  • They won't impede the speed that your page loads on browsers as they are a minute part of your page
  • It's quite likely that they will become obsolete in the near future

Further reading


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If you have more questions or you need more help or advice, please contact us and we will endeavour to help you ~ without any obligation.

Rosemary Probert - High Forest Web Works

 

High Forest Web Works

Address:    Ropehaugh, Hexham, Northumberland NE47 9HG
Website:    www.high-forest.co.uk
Email:      info@high-forest.co.uk
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