Meta Tags: Keywords Duplicated on Multiple Pages

[mlevenhagen]

Quick Question:

I had never thought of this before. Is it a problem to use the same keywords on seperate pages of your website in the Meta Tags?

For instance I have several pages about "Internet Marketing". Can I use "Internet Marketing" as a keyword in the Meta Tags of each?

My first reaction is no. I think they treat each page seperatly. But, like duplicate content, is it a bad thing for the search engine bots?

Thanks for your thoughts,

[minstrel]

The keywords meta tag has minimal impact these days, although there are still a few search engines that claim to pay some attention to it.

You don't need to worry about a "duplicate content" penalty with the keywords mata tag -- on the other hand, if it's going to be good for anything, you should customize the tag for individual pages, just as you do for the title tag.

[spidermonkey]

Just to add to that...

No search engine worth it's salt will list more than two pages in it's index for a site for the same keywords/search term - so don't bother trying.

Mike

[mlevenhagen]

Yea, I new that the big guys don't pay much attention to keywords (at the moment).

My real focus is the page itself, but I've been adding keywords for the smaller engines that use them and just in case Google, Yahoo or MSN give them some weight again...

I'm not intentionally trying to spam the engines by having the same keywords in my meta tags on different pages. But if I have 5 pages that are about chickens why wouldn't I have chicken on all 5 for a keyword... the pages might be one long copy (same article) split up on different pages.

Thanks for both of your input,

[buddhu]

I don't think you need to worry about actual rules that say you shouldn't use the same keywords on different pages, but as minstrel said, you should tailor your KW meta to its page.

If 'chickens' is the focus of more than one page, and that term appears in the page content of several pages then you'd naturally put 'chickens' in the KW meta of all those pages.

Basically, put in the keywords that are relevant to each page individually, and don't worry too much about how they compare to the KW metas on your other pages. Don't put keywords that don't appear on that page into the page's KW meta.