Keywords: When should I update them?

[subcitizen]

Thanks for looking at my post!

Here's a question I haven't been able to find an answer to: After finding just the right keywords for my site, how long should I have them in my metatags before changing them? Do the search engines basically access the keywords immediately after uploading them, or do they need to spider/bot the site first?

Even then, after finding the keywords aren't working, let's say, a week, should I take them down, or should I give them a longer period to do their thing? How long should I wait?

I'm really clueless on this and obviously need all the help I can get!

I really appreciate any and all imput!

Thanks, Jason

[SurfYourName]

If you have found the “perfect” keywords, why do you want to change them? Most big search engines do not pay close if any attention to meta tags.

Erik Bledsoe
www.SurfYourName.com

[subcitizen]

Thanks Erik, I guess I was speaking hypothetically. I don't mean I found the perfect keywords for my site, I just mean I found keywords for my site that I think would work. Getting back to the main thrust of my querry, how long should I keep them in place, before I change them for another set of keywords?

[SurfYourName]

Why do you want to change them? What are you trying to achieve?

Erik Bledsoe
www.SurfYourName.com

[wige]

Keywords don't matter much, but they can still matter. It is like a way of telling the search engine what to look for in the content of the site. Changes to the keywords will probably have very little effect on your ranking, and changes may take quite some time before they are added to the SERPs. If you are asking how long it takes before you should expect to see a change, there is no set schedule. I have seen external links push a page to the front SERP in hours, and I have seen it take weeks. And that is one of the more important elements in ranking. I would say keep them in line with your content, and keep them up to date.

[weslinda]

Spend your effort on items that will affect your positions to a higher degree, such as the right keywords in your title tags, h1 tags and links within the content on your page.

[stevewaganer]

Firstly You should choose your main keyword for site and start optimizing for that keyword and then if you need more keyword to be added then you should add the keyword in xisting or creat a new pages for that keyword it will be good for you .....

[bj]

Don't worry about adding/subtracting/editing keywords, you should concentrate instead on adding relevant content. Constantly. All the time. Over and over again.

Content is king. It's followed in importance by the link text for links leading to you, coupled with how many links lead to you. The rest is minor, and will have little to do with your ranking or serps.

[emptymirror]

The keywords in your meta keywords tag don't count for much with the search engines; they mostly ignore them.

And if you do choose to use a meta keywords tag (many don't bother anymore), you don't change it unless the content of the page changes. You want to keep the meta tag keywords relevant to what's on the rest of the page.

The effective places to be using the relevant keywords for the page are:
- In the page's title (very important!)
- In the text of your page
- In your headings (H1, H2, H3 etc.)
- In links to the page

Be sure to use them in a natural way. If it sounds spammy, you're doing it wrong.

So don't worry about those meta tags - and concentrate on using your keywords elsewhere, where they do matter.

cheers ~
Denise

[itispals]

The days of keywords being positioned in metatags is old fashioned, though some search engines do give priority. As far as the Internet's Search Leader Google's guidelines, it is more important for you to build your site for your target audience and so your content matters a lot. i.e what are you trying to tell your visitor about you..if the visitor likes it, he is going to come back and may even refer his friends to visit your site. Else you loose him.
So Content is the top priority.
Then how do you make yourself visible in the search engine, if assuming, you have come out with the set of keywords which you think suits your site, then all you need to do is follow some of the basic Search Engine Optimization Guidelines like, creating a nice title, which contains your keyword, creating a description that also contains your keywords, creating a robots.txt, seeing to that the links are working properly, seeing to that link namings are proper, adding a site map to your site, naming all your images, etc..
Regarding the time frame, the time interval between the first crawl and the next one also depends on the kind of site you own. If you own a content based site, the bots may crawl even every minute, if own a site where content doesnt change for quite a long period, then the bot may take a bit of longer time. So one week is never a time frame, so dont change your keywords, if you think its the best that you have come out with.
This should definitely help you out to a great extent.
Hope it helps.