Meta Keywords Do Not Need to Match Page Copy

Yahoo! will not ban you if you have keywords in your meta keywords tag that do not match the exact content on your page. I mean, if you have meta keywords that are totally off topic to the page, and someone reviews the page, it might raise a flag. But if you have a page on plasma TVs and you do not use the word “television� on the page copy, but you use TV and then in the meta keywords you decide to add “television", how can that be bad? Of course you may want to add any keywords that are important to you to the visible page copy, but if you don’t, I don’t think it will cause a penalty. You just won’t rank that well for the keyword, since its not in your visible page copy.

[OldWelshGuy]

The keywords meta is not given any weight (or maybe a minute amount, but nothing to care about) anyhow so you can put what you like in there. You quite rightly point out though that if you stuff it with irrelevant words then you might well trip a flag.

[Bloggeries]

Stuffing keywords anywhere is a bad idea. You are better off targeting 2-3 keywords per page, and using them. The previous posts are correct about the Keyword META anyway. It is hardly given any weight these days.

Pay more attention to the Title and Description. Use a couple of the keywords from your page there, and you will be better off.

[Paul_KY]

Has anyone tried omitting meta tags/keywords completely and just having a title, which describes the page to the tee?

[OldWelshGuy]

YEP I wouldn't recommend not having a description meta though as it is used by many directories and some search engines.

[Paul_KY]

If a search engine, which uses meta tags as a description, finds no meta tags, what would they default to? A few nicely placed sentences in the body of the page? wink wink