Limit to Keywords?

[jaca]

Though I have been a web designer for a number of years, I am relatively new to SEO. My understanding was that it is not good to use the same word over and over again in key phrases. Is there a limit to the number to times one word should be used, or a percentage to the number of keywords/keyphrases in your meta tag?

Thanks for your help.

Jan

[awall19]

Meta tags currently carry very little weighting in current search engines.
There are no written rules for tags. Generally its not a good idea for the description tag to repeat any word more than a few times. It should read like general good structured sentences in english (or whatever your native tounge.)

With keyword tag you probably do not want the same word to appear twice in a row or more than about 3 times total. The keyword tag is only recognized officialy by inktomi and unofficially by teoma (of the 5 major crawler based search engines.) The keyword tag is not even used by many major SEOs.

On page copy, page title, and anchor text are important.

[minstrel]

With keyword tag you probably do not want the same word to appear twice in a row or more than about 3 times total.

That's not a bad rule of thumb for individual keywords - if you use keyphrases in which one of the words is repeated but in the context of a phrase (e.g., kitchen cleansers, bathroom cleansers, kitchen curtains, kitchen organizers...) that is not a simple repetition, this as far as I can tell does not count as the same word.

And, although it seems to be true that it is not given a great deal of weight by most major search engines, I would still recommend that you include a keywords meta tag - it won't hurt and it might help with some directories or search engines.

[jaca]

Thank you for the information.

My understanding, with the changes going on in Google, that keywords/keyphrases may play a role again.

To use it in your Title, Description, does the same hold true to only use it a few times?

Jan

[jaca]

Hi David,

Thank you for your response.

So are you saying that if you use, for example, "kitchen cabinet, kitchen floor, kitchen sink, kitchen ......" that repeating "kitchen" more than three times is ok as long as other words are associated with it?

Jan

[awall19]

There are tons of examples of how keywords in the keywords tag does not even matter. As far as repition goes, the new Google algorithm tends to like lower keyword density until you develope sufficient link popularity...

[jaca]

Hi Aaron,

I guess I am a tad confused because so many people, even in webproworld, talk about keywords and keyphrases and that people even pay for them, that I assume they had to be important. I just wanted to make sure the repitition was not too much.

When you say put it at the top, do you mean in Title and Description? Hope this doesn't sound "duh", just trying to do the best for my client.

Happy Holidays!

Jan

[minstrel]

So are you saying that if you use, for example, "kitchen cabinet, kitchen floor, kitchen sink, kitchen ......" that repeating "kitchen" more than three times is ok as long as other words are associated with it?

Yes. For example, my site contains information about various types of psychological problems or disorders or mental illnesses. To use an example I've quoted before, one of the pages is about anxiety disorders and the keywords tag for that page is as follows:

<META NAME="keywords"
CONTENT="anxiety, anxiety disorder, panic attack, panic disorder, phobia, agorophobia, social phobia, social anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, ptsd, stress">

A page on domestic violence:
<META NAME="keywords"
CONTENT="domestic violence, family violence, domestic asssault, wife abuse, spouse abuse, spousal assault, child abuse, sexual assault, anger management, control, physical abuse, emotional abuse">

And one on stress and stress management:
<META NAME="keywords"
CONTENT="stress, stress management, relaxation therapy, stress coping, stress control, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, ptsd, workplace stress, work stress, work-place stress, job stress, employment stress, burnout, burn-out">

(wow... looking at the keywords for some of my pages for the first time in a long time tells me that I should go through my site and make some revisions...)

[minstrel]

I guess I am a tad confused because so many people, even in webproworld, talk about keywords and keyphrases and that people even pay for them, that I assume they had to be important. I just wanted to make sure the repitition was not too much.

They are certainly not the most important factor but I think they still do have some relevance...

When you say put it at the top, do you mean in Title and Description? Hope this doesn't sound "duh", just trying to do the best for my client.

The "at the top" part in Aaron's posts are his "tagline" - it's in all of his posts and doesn't refer to this topic... :o)

However, it is worthwhile trying to put your title, description, and keywords meta tags (especially the tile tag) near the top of the HTML code - in particular, if you have a lot of scripting in your <HEAD> section, put the tags above that...

[jaca]

Hi David,

Your example from your site was incredibly helpful, thank you so much! I now need to go into my own site and take a look at my tags.

But I did notice that you did not repeat the same word over and over, it was more the same theme. My client wants to (basically) use the same word over and over but with a different word(s) in front or behind it. Does that make any difference?

Do you have suggestions for Title and Description in this context as well?

Happy Holidays from a fellow Canadian (in Vancouver with my sister in Ottawa as we speak :-)

Jan