Meta Tag Keyword Stuffing?

[geoffcruz]

Hey guys i would just like to ask if there is a rule on how many keyword you can put in the meta tags? I just tried with a new site of mine and put in like 150 KWs. Will my site get banned by google because of that?

[Glenn Leader]

150 keywords is way too many.... This will only
confuse the search engines, and they'll probably
ignore most of them.

I normally only ever put two maximum. The main
subniche keyword (sometimes), and page specific
keyword (always).

HTH

Glenn

[geoffcruz]

Glenn

So there are no benefits in putting all the possible keywords in your meta tags?

[geoffcruz]

well most big websites has like hundreds of KW in their tags and they rank well

[Andrew G Gowans]

It may well be that most "big" websites rank well because of their age, the number of pages they have and the quality of their content and not their keywords.

There are those who will tell you that this meta tag is not even considered by some search engines because of key word stuffing in the past when it was considered a good seo tactic to use.

It is still important as a small part of your seo strategy but entering any more than 5, 6 keywords is a total waste of time and effort.

As mentioned previously, the one keyword that should be included is the primary keyword for that page.

Andrew G.

[Glenn Leader]

Originally Posted by geoffcruz

Glenn

So there are no benefits in putting all the possible keywords in your meta tags?

No advantage at all. Complete waste of time and effort. Your keywords
should support the content of your pages, you can't possibly have 150
keywords in a single article... Just one or two normally.

HTH

Glenn

[Glenn Leader]

Originally Posted by pakidesigner

i think 4 to 6 keywords can be used....i seen that ebay uses many keywords in there home page.

ebay have MASSIVE branding power.. they don't need SEO.

Glenn

[geoffcruz]

Well Glenn i think you are right, i am gonna trim down my kw's and see what happens

[Joshua.E1]

Stuffing too much keywords in the keyword tag is not a good idea, for me I would use the most 10 related keywords in it.

[saggy23]

Using 150 keywords in Meta Tag is not a good idea. It's really too much. Try to minimize it as much as possible. Use only the main keywords which you consider as very much relevant to your site. Otherwise search engines probably ignore them.

[AlexTampa]

I have not used meta keywords in 2 years

[webpromoterservice]

the keyword tag is much less important now.
Focus your efforts on the title,meta description tag and the content of your site.
The word "stuffing" tells you it is definitely something negative

[geoffcruz]

Well i will remove the tags and try to do all of your tips. Thanks

[dburk]

Hi geoffcruz,

Most major Search Engines ignore the keyword meta tag, except to penalize your page for keyword stuffing.

As a rule you should not include any words that are not part of your title, description or content. Many directories will use your keyword meta tag for review and categorization, so it may be worthwhile to leave your primary keywords in, provided they are in your page content.

[hunter29]

Originally Posted by geoffcruz

Hey guys i would just like to ask if there is a rule on how many keyword you can put in the meta tags? I just tried with a new site of mine and put in like 150 KWs. Will my site get banned by google because of that?

Hi,

If you are specifically talking about meta keyword tag, then major search engines don't give much importance to this tag like earlier. So just use your targeted keywords wisely in this tag and leave it. You are not going to get benefit by putting 150 keywords in the meta tags.

[geoffcruz]

hey good news looks like google dont mind if you put a lot of tags, my site just got indexed

[iblbuilder]

There is absolutely no SEO benefit to filling keywords tag up.

[paulgl]

hey good news looks like google dont mind if you put a lot of tags,
my site just got indexed

Actually, google could care less what you do to your site. It's easy to get
indexed. Has nothing to with tags. Getting traffic from google, now there's
the rub. Most search engines ignore those keyword tags. They have
become almost meaningless.

Here's just a little experiment I ran. I did a search for pet shop, no
quotes. Hasbro's pet shop toy page came up first. Took a gander at
the source. Keyword meta tag was empty.

Paul

[dburk]

Hi geoffcruz,

Keyword stuffing is a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Just say no to keyword stuffing!

Keyword stuffing - Webmasters/Site owners Help

[PalatnkFactor]

DO NOT keyword stuff. That is considered SPAM by Google and all you're doing is really hurting your website instead of helping it so why do it? Believe me, it will get you nowhere.

What you want to do is have the right on-site SEO structure and than some solid link building, thats where you'll see success in the SERPs.

You can read a great resource released by Google: Googles Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

[WareTime]

meta keywords - not needed. If used, no more than 10 keywords, 5 or fewer is better. Some SE's, notably Google ignore the meta keywords.

meta description - also not needed, but very nice to have because it will appear in the serps with you link to that page. You can tailor the description to make someone reading it want to click to find out more.

If you look at any niche that has been around for 5 plus years, chances are that at least a couple of the top 10 sites will be meta keyword stuffed. This does not mean that is why they are in the top 10. This is one of those that was then, this is now situations. Years ago keyword stuffing the the meta keywords worked. Since then the SE's wised up. Any sites left in the top 10 that are stuffed either have decent back links, good content or both.

Also in the same category of the meta keywords is the importance of H1 tags with your keywords. Doesn't matter now if that is and H-anything or simply bolded etc. If you are into making pages semantically correct then you will necessarily use H1, H2 etc to organize the relation of your content.

These days if you are going to over optimize or under optimize I feel you are better off under optimizing. Why? Because overoptimizing will likely get you dinged in the serps, today, tomorrow or the year after. As time goes by the search engines are relying less and less on "hints" put their by the webmaster, they are evolving to be able to figure out what the page is about on their own. Plus when you under optimize, you save time, which means you can make more content.

[tymes90]

A good rule to go by is 100 characters no more. Of course that was a long time ago.

Now I dont think that search engines even pay much attention to meta tags anymore.

[geoffcruz]

ok guys thank you all for your suggestions!