I am not sure if this is the right forum for this. Although this seems related to website coding and relates to configuration and optimization.

Discussions related to web programming languages and other related issues. Topics may include configuration, optimization, practical usage and database connectivity.

Well meta tags are my issue.

On my site ( www.pcplayground.com (http://www.pcplayground.com) ) I do news stories.

I have a story (just picking one out of randomness) titled "US Troops Stop Iraqi Elections" Usually for these kind of stories I would use this meta tag sequence:

<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="US, Troops, Stop, Iraqi, Elections,">

One question I have regarding this is, do I add a comma (,) after the last word (elections). Also, are meta keywords case sensitive?

I was just thinking that people may hear about the story on the news or something, and type in more of a phrase search, so I decided that I should start using:

<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="US, Troops, Stop, Iraqi, Elections, US Troops Stop Iraqi Elections,">

Would this be a bad thing to do? As there are repeated words? And once again, what about the last comma?

What would be the best way to do meta tags simply based off of a news story title?

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance to anyone who helps.

Meta tags aren't weighted as heavily by search engines as they used to be. That said, no trailing comma and keywords are not case sensitive. As for multiple instances within the keywords, they are liekly ignored as this was a common padding technique in times past. Use a description that contains all the keywords and make sure they appear in the top third of the page and you should get maximum effect.

Also, if you do use meta tags for keywords, make sure they appear often in your copy or, as I understand it, some search engines may find your site irrelevant to those keywords...

Good luck :)

Meta tags aren't weighted as heavily by search engines as they used to be.

Well, when I added a word it moved me from rank 5 to rank. So I doubt they do any harm, mine as well put them in the site as best as possible.

Also, if you do use meta tags for keywords, make sure they appear often in your copy or, as I understand it, some search engines may find your site irrelevant to those keywords...

Actually I heard that repeating words over and over again is worse. Something like you should only repeat the word for a maximum of 3 times. Anyone know about this?

Originally posted by PCplayground
...One question I have regarding this is, do I add a comma (,) after the last word (elections). Also, are meta keywords case sensitive?
....

<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="US, Troops, Stop, Iraqi, Elections, US Troops Stop Iraqi Elections,">
....

No you do not need to add a comma after Elections. Another tip, if you don't use any commas in the keyword meta tag, search engines can mix the words to make a new one. So you could do it like this:
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="US Troops Stop Iraqi Elections">
So now if someone searches for US elections, your site could be listed or if someone seachres for Iraqi Tropps, it could be listed too. Hope this helped :D

sponk,

Very usefull information. Very useful indeed... :)

Thanks. :)

you maybe already doing this but it would be good idea to set page title to the title of the article.