For the longest time, I've used keyword phrases in my meta tags. This does cause many duplicate terms. I recently outsourced a directory submission project and they recommended keywords rather than phrases. Using the ever popular widgets as an example, my site focuses on Widgets. My keywords were Widget, Widget Accessories, Blue Widget, Green Widget, etc. Should they be widget, accessories, blue, green, etc. I'd like opinions and what works best with Yahoo/MSN. From what I've read (and correct if I'm wrong), Google doesn't pay much attention to the meta keywords. Thanks.
Now i think only MSN pays attention to meta tags not yahoo. (imo) I think keyphrase is more useful because it creates more room for visitors.I would suggest keyphrase same as page title.
I don’t think any search engine still pays much attention to keywords in meta tags. But if you want to use them your best bet would be to use keywords found in your title.
MSN did say that they used the Meta Keywords tag, but when I took a look at their guidelines I could no longer find that statement. The Komodo Tale SEO For Everybody
That's true, but I've noticed that whenever a new page of mine gets indexed, the first description shown on MSN always comes from the meta tags. Yahoo and google don't seem to pay attention to that tag, though.
I agree that you're probably best served by matching your keywords in your meta tags to your title - and if you're using multiple keywords, I would favor phrases over individual words. I don't think the "Big Three" SEs place much value on meta tags anymore, although they are sometimes used as the site description in the SERPs. Some of the smaller engines, however, still use meta tag data in their algorithms, so it's a good idea to include them. Sam
http://www.e-marketing-news.co.uk/april_2004.html With appologies to Mike for such a long quote. If you find the above good I think you will find http://www.e-marketing-news.co.uk/ worth the visit. The Komodo Tale Google Datacenter SERP Tool
Very interesting dialog, and I presume that the 'Jon' is Yahoo! Search Manager Jon Glick, per your link. Any idea as to the date of the interview? There's nothing I can find indicating a date in the interview itself, and there's an article below it that promotes a seminar with the date of April 23, 2004. His statements appear to fly in the face of the current "SEs don't use meta data" thinking, so I'm wondering if the information may be dated... Sam