25 - 20 - 3 Keywords?? How many??

[LazyCat]

:rolleyes: So I was having this heated conversation with another SEO about how many keywords to use these days with the evolving algo's etc.

I have seen high PR and listiings with only 3 keywords. I have a new site going up and I only wnat to use 8 because my research shows that dong the customary 25 is just fluff beyond the 8 decent keywords I researched.

She said you MUST use 20-25, she has numerous #1-20 ranked sites to back her up.

I disagree.

I wonder what other WPF SEO's have to say.

[Chris]

What do you mean by keywords? Keywords in your content? The keywords meta tag? Keywords in your title?

[chromate]

Yeah, as Chris indicates... repeating the same keyword in the title wont help you. Keywords in the meta tags will do nothing for your rankings. Which leaves keywords in your page content.

Use the keyword in <h1><h2><h3> tags. As for how many times to use the same keyword on the page, I'm not sure. I don't believe it actually makes much difference these days. I've seen pages rank well for keywords that aren't contained on the page at all.

[Chris]

If its about keywords in your content. You don't have to limit yourself. Each page on your site should focus on a single keyword phrase (or atmost two) but you can use as many keywords as you want in your main content. It will not hurt the main phrase but it'll give you a chance of being found under those words.

[ozgression]

Keywords in the meta tags will do nothing for your rankings.

It is taken into consideration by Yahoo and possibly others. But, not by Google (I assume you were talking about Google :)).

[chromate]

Is it? I didn't think any search engines used meta tags for ranking sites these days.

But yeah, I did have google in mind when I wrote that anyway.

[Chris]

Hmm, you're right. Last time I did a test Yahoo didn't use them. But now, they do.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?_adv_prop=web&x=op&ei=UTF-8&prev_vm=p&fr=fp-top&va=eliterature&va_vt=any&vp=&vp_vt=any&vo=&vo_vt=any&ve=&ve_vt=any&vd=all&vst=on&vs=online-literature.com&vf=all&vm=p&vc=&fl=0&n=10

The word only appears in the meta tags.

[LazyCat]

What do you mean by keywords? Keywords in your content? The keywords meta tag? Keywords in your title?

Keyword Tag.

I'm getting a sense from this thread that some of you do not use the keyword tag anymore. I can understand that Google blows it out with all the meta tags except the title tag; but, I believe it might not serve a website's listings on other SERPS which has also been pointed out.

Keywords in the text, I never use them - - - (relax, it's my twisted sense of humor.)

So, again, if you believe in the keyword tag, how many keywords? 25 like the old school teaches or what?

[James]

I'd say that if it's a search engine that supports keywords, it musn't be very up-to-date, so it'd probably be best to use the old-school.

[Chris]

The meta aren't going to be weighted highly anywhere, if they are used, so it isn't worth spending time worrying about this.

Honestly, meta tags simply are not worth the time. If you can think of 25 keywords that fit your content, by all means, use them. Try some common misspellings as well. But you should spend your time doing more important things like building links, optimizing your internal links, and doing keyword research to find which exact phrase will give you the most reward as your main keyword.

[ozgression]

The meta aren't going to be weighted highly anywhere, if they are used, so it isn't worth spending time worrying about this.

Yes, they aren't weighted highly, but if it helps (even so slightly) it is still worth doing. Adding your target keywords to a meta tag takes only a few seconds.

[James]

Unless you have a few thousand pages.

I can't see myself using keyword tags in the near future.

What Chris says is true, it's a lot better to optimize the content itself, and get links to your site, and work on hitting the right keywords.

[chromate]

I agree wih ozgression. For new pages at least, you may as well spend a few seconds to type out the keywords in the meta tags. Might not do a lot, but every little helps.

[Chris]

Oh ya, its worth the time it takes to type in the words. Its not worth it to spend days fretting about it and worrying if they're "right".

[eMEraLdwPn]

i was ranking pretty poorly on msn for a lot of terms that i did well on google... i updated my meta tags and a few days later i was doing much better on msn.. didn't notice a change on yahoo or google

[LazyCat]

This thread is getting very interesting. I'm getting great information.

For me, the issue of keywords is now put to rest.

I'm blowing them out and staying with the title tag only. Clearly that's where Google is, and where the SERPS are going

I'm going to keep it simple and focus on keywords for the content only.

Why do you think SEO's like me who are not yet masters join a forum like this?

Answer: to see what the big dogs are doing and contribute whatever I can; even if it's an annoying question.

[James]

i was ranking pretty poorly on msn for a lot of terms that i did well on google... i updated my meta tags and a few days later i was doing much better on msn.. didn't notice a change on yahoo or google
Really? I do barely decent in MSN and can't even find my site in the results of the same keywords (even up to 16 pages) in Google.