[SOLVED] meta keywords

[asmith]

is there any tip for puttng keywords for the search engines ?

does it matter if a words comes first in the line or in the middle or at last?

 

[phpQuestioner]

put in keywords that are relevant to your site; keyword that would be common searched for - that would help your site appear in the search results. I do not think keyword placement in your keyword meta will impact your search engine ranking/status.

[dbrimlow]

SEO is a very complex animal, and keyword metags is just about the lowest step on the rung of making a page or site search engine bot friendly.

 

You are better off without any keyword meta tag than one that does not properly reflect actual keywords ON THE PAGE ITSELF.

 

In the old days (pre-Google), the keyword meta tag was important because most  websites were graphic heavy with little to no text. But that obviously got way too abused.

 

The main things to remember about SEO is:

 

1. the spider bots are smart - they know what to look for on a page.

 

2. the bots get mad - they don't like sneaky tactics and penalize those who try to fool them.

 

3. your page's text should tell the bots what the page is about.

 

The three most important factors in getting good page rankings are this:

 

1. Quality, high level relevant links TO your site.

 

2. TEXT, TEXT, TEXT - keyword rich text (not volume, appropriateness) - levels of semantic markup in proper hierarchical order - headers, paragraphs, lists and bold.

 

3. Keyword title tags

 

A page that is structured as follows:

 

title - keyword included

 

h1 - site name (same on each page)

 

h2 - page title - keyword not necessary, remember, bots are smart.

paragraph - strong opening paragraph with well thought out and placed keywords/key phrases that ACTUALLY describe the page (can also be used as the page's meta description - since if there is NO meta description google will use the first 20 words of text it finds on the page in the search results).

 

h3 - use of headers to define products, site sections, etc.

paragraphs - paragraphs or lists within each h3 with keywords in bold text.

 

h4 - h6 - sub-headers also give the bot focus of importance within the text.

 

Footer - a footer with the company - site name and text based links to all of the main  sections of the site give the bot a good reference of where to follow (usually the top navbar links).

 

And last, the most important meta tags:

 

1. title

2. content-mime type charset

3. description

4. robots follow, index

 

The keywords meta tag should only be added AFTER you've written all of the text on the page. Only put a word or phrase that is actually on the page in the keyword meta tag.

 

AND DON'T DUPLICATE WORDS. Putting the same word over and over in the keywords meta tag can be considered "spamming" the bot. You only need to have it in there once.

 

It is better to have either NO keyword meta tag, or one with four different keywords in it than typing in all the possible combinations of the same word in a search phrase; Google only looks for each word once.

 

The BEST way to see how Google relates kewords to key search phrases is to do a search in Google. Then click on the "cached" link within the first three or four results; Google highlights the keywords you entered on the cached version of the page (just the words ... not the actual phrase).

 

Here is a great place with free SEO tools to check how your page is optimized or not:

 

rankquest.com

 

I administer a large Manhattan NYC real estate firm website. There are over 700 brokers in NYC, all with websites and all vying for first and second page results ranking. Yet for some of the most important keyword phrases in our industry/region my site is either #1 or in the top 5 page 1 results - and for the least important keywords it is at least on page 1 or 2 of results:

 

nyc apartment - #1

nyc apt - #1

apt in nyc - #1

manhattan apartment - #1

manhattan apt - #1

apartments in nyc - 2#

apt in manhattan - #3

nyc apt for sale - #4

rental apts nyc - #10

 

I actively targeted these words in my text. And for the past year have been converting the more than 800 static pages from old, non-standards, graphic heavy table based layout to text heavy, keyword rich css layout with document structure that can be understood with all graphics and styling stripped away (the way the google bot does).

 

However, recently it was brought to my attention that we were not even in the first four or more page for the phrases with "apartments in new york" or "apartment in new york city".

 

My pages are indeed rich in the words "apartment" or "apartments" and "new york" or "new york city"; but the Google bot is obviously smart enough to know that I didn't target these words as "important" enough when together.

 

This just goes to show exactly HOW complex SEO is.

[asmith]

thanks a ton for this great information !!!!