Keywords and commas

Posted by Goloh (307 days ago)

I'm developing a website to sell stuff in a specialised area. The template provides for me to enter keywords so that search engines can guide customers to the site. Of course, this is standard stuff for all sites. However I am not getting any consensus on whether keywords should be separated by commas or not. For anyone with experience in this area, what's your view please? It's interesting to see how fervently each side states its case.

(I am based in Hong Kong)

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Posted by Joe-GZ (307 days ago)

Keywords should be in lower case and separated by commas. Try not to have more than 30 or so words in your keyword meta tag. Also, try not to repeat the same word more than 2 or 3 times and make sure that if you do that there are keywords separating the instances of the repeated keywords.

However, the keyword meta tag is an outdated tag and almost no search engines use it for anything serious. Unless your keywords do not match the content of your page. Then the search engines are likely to penalize you pretty heavily sometimes.

(I am based in Guangzhou)

Posted by Goloh (307 days ago)

Thanks. The template for the site provides a place for entering keywords for the whole site (that's in one area of the innards of the site) and then again separately on the different design page of each item for sale. But I'm sort of a layman and not sure whether the place I am entering all these terms is the "keyword meta tag" or not. Hope that makes sense. If the keyword meta tag is outdated and not useful now, why bother with it? What has replaced it?

(I am based in Hong Kong)

Posted by Joe-GZ (307 days ago)

When you enter keywords in your software to create your web pages, it should all be put in the keywords meta tag. A meta tag is a hidden piece of website code that used to tell the search engines what your site was all about.

But people really abused the keywords by putting way too many, or misleading keywords. So most of the search engines used it for the sole purpose of finding out what your site is about.

Now-a-days, search engines will compare the keywords you use with the rest of the page that the keywords are on. If the keywords matches the page content then everything is great and the search engines are happy.

Depending on how misleading or non-represented the keywords are on the web page, then the search engines may just either ignore your keywords, or completely refuse to list your site because they think that it might be spam. It all depends on the search engine, how badly the keywords/content matches and the algorithm they are using.

The biggest thing that search engines look for is content. The more focused content you have, the better the search engines place you.

There really are a million different variables when it comes to getting a website to show up high in search engine rankings. This is why there are people out there who get paid to do just this one job.

The best advice I can offer without getting technical is just to make sure you have good content that matches the focus of your site. If you do that, then the world is good. :)

(I am based in Guangzhou)

Posted by Goloh (307 days ago)

Then the world is in fact good. I'm a decent sort of guy. Now if someone will just start buying what I'm selling! Thanks, Joe-GZ.

(I am based in Hong Kong)