Keywords - Take Your Site to the Top!

Wouldn't you like to get your site to the top the quickest way possible?  These easy to follow instructions will do just that for you.  Just follow these instructions and watch your site do the quick climb to the top!

• Keywords used in a meta tag must also appear in the text on the page. If not, it is spam. 
• Keywords in a meta tag should not be duplicated (unless in a phrase), if so, it is spam. 
• Keywords can be separated by commas or spaces. If you use phrases, you must use commas. 
• Keywords should not appear in the text of your page more than 4 times. If it does, it will be perceived as spam (even though it may not be). 
• Keywords should always appear in an image alt tag. However, do not add an alt tag to mouseover text as it will interfere unless done perfectly. 
• Keywords are case sensitive. Upper case words and lower case words are not considered duplicates by most search engines, Some do though. 
• Keywords should not be general words such as "used" "for sale", they should be product specific for maximum positioning.
• Keywords should be weighted with the most pertinent to your product appearing first. 
• Keywords that are heavily weighted (relevant) should be found at least once in your title and description meta tags. However, these tags are limited on space (see below)

You may have a problem with using the vendor names as keywords. Please follow this link for a review of lawsuits brought about by keywords: 

If you want a good, in depth review of meta tags, you can follow this link: 

Over time, the majority of meta tag development has been spent on the keywords' tag. People include every possible word they can think of that relates to their website, and often words that don't. This is, without a doubt, wasted effort that may actually lead to lower ranking. Some guidelines, when developing your keywords' tag, are as follows: 

Include your primary keywords and nothing else: 
Most webpages will only rank well for 1-3 keyword combinations. Search engines compare the meta tags to the body to determine keyword relevance (it's actually a little more complicated). If you "water" down your keywords in any area of your website, you may suffer promotionally. If you want to target multiple keyword combinations, use the variations on other pages. This may increase the amount of pages you have ranked well in the search engines and ultimately provide your website with more traffic. 

Keep it short: 
The websites that rank highly ( in the engines that read the keywords' tag) often favor websites that use a short keyword specific keywords' tag. If you don't have a keyword on your webpage, don't use it in the keywords' tag. We recommend using less then ten words in the keywords' tag for best results. 

Length of Meta Tags: 
Title should be no longer than 60 characters which include the spaces (a spider doesn't know the difference between a space and a character its all binary to them). 
Description tag should be no longer than 230 characters (this actually differs engine to engine but 230 is the norm) 

Keywords should be no more than should be no more than 480 characters.

Review your chosen keywords: 
Ask Yourself, Will They Help: If your webpage doesn't have keyword rich text in its body, developing meta tags for your webpage is pointless. Until you have webpage text that reflects your keywords (without meta tags), you are truly wasting your time. 

Understand Which Meta Tags Are More Important: 
Don't waste your time packing your keywords' tag full of keywords, while spending no time working on your title and description tag. The order of importance of your meta tags is as follows: 

Realistic Meta Tags:
To develop effective meta tags, you need to do the following: 

• Take a Look At Your Webpage: If you are adding keywords into your meta tags that aren't on your webpage, don't expect to enjoy good search engine placement for your keywords. 
• Consider What Are Your Most Important Keywords: Getting a webpage ranked well for one set of keywords is hard enough for most people. Don't try to have one webpage list well for multiple keywords. If you have more keywords that you want to rank well for, make more pages on your website. 
• Don't Develop Long Meta Tags: By developing extremely long meta tags, you are effectively reducing your keyword relevancy. Remember that search engines use mathematical algorithms to place an order of importance. By watering down your keywords, you are reducing your possibility to rank well. Additionally, search engines won't read past a set number of characters for each meta tags. All of the excess is simply wasted. 
• Avoid Repeating: Excessive repeating of keywords in meta tags (or anywhere on a webpage) may easily lead to the search engine flagging you for spamming and not adding your webpage into their database. Repeating two or three times is generally okay, if not consecutively. 

Alta Vista
Meta tags supported? Yes 
Spamming penalty? Yes 
Excite
Meta tags supported? Description tag only 
Spamming penalty? Yes 
HotBot
Meta tags supported? Yes 
Spamming penalty? Yes 
InfoSeek
Meta tags supported? Yes 
Spamming penalty? Yes 
Lycos
Meta tags supported? No 
Spamming penalty? Yes 
Northern Light
Meta tags supported? No 
Spamming penalty? No 
Web Crawler
Meta tags supported? Description tag only 
Spamming penalty? Yes 

Sharon Hemmerly
4/14/00