Keywords Meta Tag

First of all let's look at the construction of the keywords meta tag:

The aloud amount of keywords is different depending on each search engine but as a general rule I recommend 3-10 keywords or phrases. Each page of your web site should have keywords that relate directly to that page's content and should be optimized for it. There is no use placing false keywords as they are regarded as spam and can only hurt your ranking. There

are 3 minor options that you might want to take into consideration when you are writing your keywords in which there are many different opinions on, they are:

1. Different Forms of a Word
2. Capitals
3. Commas

Again it cannot be certain, but when I choose my keywords I generally like to have them in the plural form as most search engines use a process called stemming with take the root word out when it is placed in plural or another form and count each; it does not, however, work in reverse.

You may use capitals if you wish as search engines tend to not be case sensitive but it is better to be on the safe side, and use all lower case for the rare occasion when your web site is submitted to a search engine that is case sensitive.

Commas may be used in between each keyword or keyphrase as you wish as it is most likely that search engines completely disregard commas and simply count them as a space. I personally use commas as they do help you to distinguish witch keyword stands alone and witch belongs to a keyphrases.

Another piece of useful information to take into account is the usefulness of keyphrases versus a keyword.

A keyphrase is generally less competitive, while most keywords are extremely competitive and tend to only be useful if you are willing to bid money on a specific keyword to receive a high search engine ranking for it. With a keyphrase there is a broader range of words and combinations of words that will be included. Let's look at an example:

While the keyword money is most definitly more searched for, it is also an extremely competitive keyword that does not give your viewer a good idea as to what your web site has to offer. On the other hand "earn money with web site" is a lot less competitive and state's exactly what kind of information you will find at the web site. It also offers different combinations of keywords including:

earn money
web site money
money with web site
earn with web site
money
ect...

As you can see it not only contains a lot more combinations then money, but also includes the keyword money itself, even though, like I said before, it would be very hard to get a high search engine ranking for the word "money". So to sum it up:

There are also several opinions on what is considered spamming your keywords and what is not. When it comes to spam it is smarter to play extremely safe as if you don't, it could be deemed spam, which could result in an even less high search engine ranking then if you had not even used the word at all. As a guideline I tend to say that 1-2 repetitions is safe and recommended, 3 repetitions is border line, and anything above is most likely considered spam.

As far as finding keywords that relate to your web site go to Word Tracker.com. They offer a free trial version of their service which allows you to search for a keyword or keyphrase and will help you choose keywords or keyphrases that relate to the original that you specified. It will also show you how many queries each received. The free trial version is more then enough to find the keywords to use in conjunction with your web site.

Final Statement

The importance of the meta keywords tag it not the deciding factor in search engine ranking or even close to. The most important thing to remember when you are dealing with the meta keywords tag is to use it in conjunction with a solid amount of well written text that contains those keywords or keyphrases throughout. While the keywords meta tag should help your web site within reason, they mainly act as a checklist for spiders so that when they visit your web site they will know to give more importance to the keywords that appear in your keywords meta tag.