Re: Number of Keywords

> I have a competitor telling a customer of mine that if you have more than
15
> Meta "keywords" of a page, it will lower search engine ranking. He says
that
> more than 15 starts to lessen each one's importance.

This is pretty much a false statement and probably comes from ignorance.
This is possibly caused by someone spamming the same keyword over and over
and then finding themselves dropped down or dropped off some search engines
entirely.  But there is a germ of truth in it.

Some search engines give the first keywords more precedence, but there is
not  currently a penalty after using 15 words unless as the Captain said,
you are repeating the same words.... and then only some search engines will
penalize you for that.

Some search engines only look at words within the first 256 characters
including spaces and commas.  Most use 512 or 1024.   I have found that 512
characters works great.... but I only use that many if I have to.  This is
extremely rare.


I have found that with some search engines you do better with fewer keywords
if they are more intelligently thought out.  This has become important
lately as more and more competitors pop up.

As an example lets say you sell fruit.  It would be wise to list "apple" on
the pages that have apples, but not smart to put the keyword orange on the
'apples" pages.  It may be related, but you're misdirecting customers to the
wrong page.  This may confuse them or anger them.  Some search engines have
gotten pretty good at building a targeted database and using too many
keywords can impact your placement for your intended important keywords.

If you want to sell apples - use as many keywords as you need.... but don't
misdirect folks or use non-related keywords.  McIntosh and Rome are good
apple keywords, orange and pear are not. Using fewer words intelligently
better directs the client to your website.

We have all done searches where the first 10 pages seem to be full of all
sorts of junk, but not what you were really searching for.  Often this is
caused by bad keyword use on the part of web developers with strange ideas
of how it all works.

Paul Wilson
webgooru(at)gte.net

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