Does anyone really - I mean really know what to do with the keyword meta tag? Here's why I ask: In a lot of guides, they tell you to put in something like 10-100 keywords that would get you more traffic. However, sites like http://digitalpoint.com's homepage use no keywords at all in its meta tag. Some use commas. Some dont use commas. Some use keywords like "-keyword". What's the "-" for? Some use a huge list, others use only a few... others use none. Some use repeat words, some only use their main keyword once. Anyone have any extensive knowledge on this? I'd really like to hear digitalpoint's response to this since his many different pages have very different perspectives on the keyword meta tag.
From what I have seen Google will punish you for to many keywords but not reward you at all for your keywords. MSN loves keywords and stuffing is great. Yahoo just really doesn't care. I personally throw about 10 words or less into the keywords but I know it does't do much good. its more out of habit than anything. I will repeat things occaionally but not normally, I like to get good keywords in there. Commas are what seperates your keywords and is a standard practice. I use them to seperate phrases since I usually use about three phrases. The - means that if you are the Hilton in Paris you want to accociate yourself with Paris Hilton but not not sex or video so you might write the keywords like "Hilton in Paris, -sex, -video". Not sure if that really works but hey it could. When it comes to multiple pages I tend to optimize each page for different keywords to spread the board. Others though like to optimize for one or two sets of keywords. Really that is just personal preference. If anyone has research on which is better I would be interested but I think it is really preference and a case by case basis. If you are competing for Hilton in Paris you probably will use something like that all th way throgh your site. If you are competing for zarfnagle purple zlinghoffs you might try spreading the board to hit "the long tail" stuff.