Quick Tips for OnPage SEO Meta Keywords

By Jonathan Camp

Meta keywords are part of your onpage search engine optimisation techniques that you should build into every page as part of your website design process. Onpage SEO is an important part of ensuring that your website ranks well within the major search engines.

Please note: “Meta Keywords” tags are not so important for search engines – over time they have been exploited by the internet marketeers and flooded with spam keywords, hence the keywords meta details have be degraded by all the search engines. Keyword “stuffing” has now meant that the keyword aspect of your header is now pretty much unused, having said that you should note the following:

• “Meta Keywords” tags are taken in account by the search engines, not the directories.
• Use a “keyword analyser” tool to get related terms and generate a meta “keywords” tag – also use the Google Keyword Tool to discover some longtail keywords relating to your website content.
• HTML: <meta name=”keywords” content=”word1, word2, word3,… “> – try to go for a maximum of 10 words and put the most important keywords first.
• The Meta “Keywords” tag should be placed with all the other Meta statements as high as possible in the HTML code.
• Accentuated letters can be used in the HTML (&eacute; = é).
• Try to use different orthographies (uppercase, lowercase, singular, plural, masculine, female, etc.) for keywords.
• Don’t forget spelling mistakes, quite often people will misspell search expressions.
• “Meta Keywords” tags should ideally be different in each web page, relevant to the content and the title tag plus the first <h1> tag on the page.
• Keywords are quite often used by third party webpage analysis tools to get an understanding about the webpage / site, so if nothing else, the keywords will be useful for these tools and save you a lot of time having to enter those keywords into your analysis tool!

The “Quick Tips” is a series of articles with short tips and tricks for various Web Development subjects on search engine optimisation from Micro Update. Other subjects being covered and included with Micro Updates SEO packages are:

• Homepage Optimization
• Keyword Phrase Optimization
• Fixing the text links
• Image Optimization
• Keyword Research
• Header Tags Optimization
• Title Tag Optimization
• Meta Tag Optimization
• Alt Tag Optimization
• Anchor Tag Optimization
• Meta tags placement
• HTML Sitemap Creation
• XML Sitemap Creation
• Meta Tags Placements
• Suggestions on Content Optimization
• Complete Image Optimization
• Traffic Tracking Codes
• Remove Spam links
• Google Sitemap
• Optimization of textual content of your Home Page and key inner pages with keyword placement within content
• Creation of Internal Linking Network

Jonathan Camp

Jonathan Camp runs Micro Update Ltd a Professional Web Design, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Mobile Application Development in Devon. He has been actively involved with the IT and Web Services areas for over 30 years. He is a PRINCE2 Practitioner and manages a very technical team at Micro Update. The business is built on the ethic of providing a practical solution for local businesses in Devon.