For SEO, do I HAVE to include every keyword I want to get ranked for in the meta keywords section? I have a wordpress site with the all-in-one SEO plugin, and I was wondering if I had to implement the keywords I want to get ranked for in the keywords section BEFORE I started doing SEO for my website. Any help would be great.
The major search engines don't use the meta keywords to rank your site, so no it's not something you should worry to much about. But optimizing so that your keywords show up in Google's tool is kind of important, and backlinking.
So how do I get my page ranked for a certain keyword? I thought that's what meta tags did, was tell the search engines what my keywords were.
Search engines read the keywords in your urls, page titles, h1-6 headers and content. And also - and this can be the most important factor - in the anchor text of backlinks. Not in your keyword metatags. As bob said, these have been a complete irrelevance for search engine ranking for many years.
First you need to care about your website On page seo Title tag, meta description, meta keywords, Alt tag, H1, H2 tags, Sitemap. Then you need to do Off page seo for website.
I wouldn't think that it would be useful since all major search engines do not use the meta keywords tag for rankings anymore. It is used to inform the search engines of what your page is containing. I wouldn't bother with them because they are pretty useless. The All-In-One SEO plugin for wordpress is good but I wouldn't count on that only to optimize your keywords. There is a lot of more important factors for keyword optimization and it is mainly done in your title tag and your content (headlines, Keyword repetition, quality content, and so on).
If you are targeting Google even if you do not add the Meta Keywords it is fine, coz Google does not prioritize meta keywords. What would be important is Title Tag and Meta Description Keyword in Domain H1 Tag Keyword Density of greater than 2% (but me i would like around 4%) Formated Text Out of many other onpage suggestion the most important optimization would be the above mentioned points. (My personal Suggestion) But there was a recent question posed to Matt Cutts; My competitor is ranking better than me and i cannot find the targeted keyword in his page but the competitor is ranking better, and the answer was its all coz of backlinks with anchor text. Hope it helps..
I usually optimize each page of my site for one particular keyword. So, when I add a new page I target an entirely new keyword
There is a best number of keywords to add to your site. Basically 8-10 is good. after you get a good rankings for the 8-10 keywords you can add some keywords to optimize too. Hope it helps..
I like using Categories for the blog key words and Tags for page & post & video & image key words. For example, post a YouTube video with Tags & Description with your key word phrase then embed it in your page, do the same with image hosting, make the image page all about a key word phrase then use linked image on page. Try writing to put key words at the beginning of sentences, and those sentences at the beginning of paragraphs. Key word phrases work well, then you get juice for the word and for a phrase that shows up in long tail searches. You can also put key words in <!-- comment tags --> but: Do not put them in the same color as the bg color of the blog. Do not go over 6% total text key word density.