In my last post I discussed the relevance of the meta description tag and the role that plays with your on page Searh Engine Optimisation efforts. Similar to the meta description, the Meta Keyword Tag and its importance and value to on page SEO has lost a lot of weight with the search engines over the years.
Web-masters abused the meta keyword tag too much and as a result of hyper keyword stuffing, the major search engines have now applied relatively little or no value in their search engine ranking algorithms. However also like the Meta Description Tag its important not to totally over look the on page SEO value the meta keyword tag has .
The purpose of the meta keyword tag is to provide an accurate picture to the search engines about the content on an individual page. The content contained within your keyword tags can be used ever so slightly by the search engines to provide a means for semantic indexing. You should think of semantic indexing as the words and phrases you would use to describe or complement your primary keywords.
Search engines do take into account semantic equivalent phrases when they index a page. But this has more of an influence on the body of content on a page than it does in the meta keywords tag. Still it is important to include some of your semantic related phrases alongside your primary keywords within the meta keyword tag. Having a good spread of semantic equivalent phrase nicely dispersed in the body of content and a few of those same phrases placed in the meta keyword tag provides more structure and organisation in order for the search engines to be able to properly index your page.
Like the meta description tag the syntax for the meta keyword tag is placed between <head> tags in your HTML. The syntax to use is as follows:
<meta name=”keyword 1, keyword, 2, keyword 3”/> etc.
Here are a few tips on how to structure and deploy your keywords within the meta keyword tag for optimum SEO effect:
- You should aim to have in the region of 8 -15 keywords within your keyword tag. You should never exceed 30 which if you did would constitute keyword stuffing and your tag would just be treated like spam by the search engines.
- On the home page you should include in your Keyword tag the keywords and phrases that best encapsulate your entire website.
- When it comes to your deep inner pages you should only include in the meta keyword tag the keywords and phrases that are uniquely attributable to that specific page. This will enhance the Search Engine Optimisation benefit for each individual page.
- You should also aim to include as many of the same keyword phrases in your keyword tag at least once more in other on page elements (e.g. title tag, H1, H2 tags, meta description, alt tags and body text).
- Use all lower case for all keywords and you should also include plural variations of your keywords where its possible.
In my next post I will examine in more detail the importance of Heading tags and the role your keywords will play in the body text on a web page.
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