Meta Tag for KEY PHRASES???

[CabinsPlusMore]

Many people searching for Cabin Rentals in Blue Ridge Georgia, are searching using the Key Phrases: "North Georgia Cabin Rentals" and "Blue Ridge Cabin Rentals" or "Cabins in Blue Ridge", etc. I came across my competition's website where they actually have a separate keyphrase meta-tag:

<meta name="keyphrases" content="georgia cabin rentals, cabins with hot tubs, ga log cabins to rent in blue ridge georgia, north georgia mountains, georgia mountain vacation lodging" />

Is this something the webmaster made up or is this legite and do search engines read meta tags like this?

Thanks,

[thindenim]

I voted no and I think it's a made up meta tag. Here's a thread I found about it: -

Does Meta Keyphrases Get Looked At

[activeco]

They like it just as any other arbitrary meta tag.

Only meta's with HTTP-EQUIV attribute are more or less universally recognized, but they must not conflict actual server headers but rather complement them.
Meta data with 'NAME=' attribute are custom/arbitrary ones and some of them are recognized, some not, by different browsers/robots.
E.g. Google introduced '<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOODP">' meta tag only for their bot, which may(not) be understood/accepted by others.
Any unknown meta tag is simply ignored.

[Dubbya]

Back in the day, you could add the word "META" to just about any senseless string of text and see an impact in the SERPs.

These days, most SE's tend to ignore extraneous meta tags and they do little more than bloat the page code.

Unless you're not happy with the DMOZ or Yahoo! listing info, all you really need is a meta keywords tag for a few SE's other than Google and a meta description tag to tweak your listing with.

Write great content, title your pages properly, use <h1>,<h2> headings, bold some captions, use image alt tags, use targeted and relevant text links and you're gold.

[CabinsPlusMore]

You noted below about having h1, h2 tags, etc. I have also seen my compeition have all h1 tags on their page and not having one h1, one h2, etc. Is this a turn off with se's or do they eat it up?

[Dubbya]

Having more than one single <h1> tag is bound to prove counterproductive. Pages were intended to focus on one main topic and the <h1> heading was created to fulfill that purpose.

While it's certainly permissible to use more than one, for example, to break a page into sections, each one with its' own <h1> heading, it would stand to reason that the more you use, the less relevant they become.

It's commonly accepted as good coding practice to use the <h1> for your main page heading, use <h2> for section headings within a page and use <h3> for subsection headings.

This provides a much more accurate representation of hierarchy within the page content and, on a larger scale, across the site as it's indexed. Big picture, creating your pages in this fashion allows you to specify which words and keyphrases are most important to the SE's as they scan the page.

 <h1>Here's my main heading</h1>
I write some content that I feel might make for a great opening paragraph.
 
        <h2>Section 1</h2>
         This is the first section
                       <h3>This is the first subsection</h3>
                       <h3>This is the second subsection</h3>

       <h2>Section 2</h2>
        This is the second section
                       <h3>This is the first subsection</h3>
                       <h3>This is the second subsection</h3>

For the most part, you can achieve the same thing using an ordered or unordered list but it wouldn't likely carry the same worth as the heading tags.

.02

[alhefner]

I have seen some of the most "off the wall" META data you can imagine. Looking at pages that actually do get top rank in SERP, I find that page content is what got them there. These "extra" tags seem to be ignored by the major SE's.

As stated above - solid SEO will get the best results.

• Page URL
• Page title
• Page description
• Optimized visible text (headings, sub-headings, lists.....)
• Link text (internal and external)
• "alt" attributes

All the standard stuff without making up things the SE's just won't use.