Meta tags

> 1. If you list: youth sport fundaising as a phrase, will: youth, sport,
> fundraising get the same results or do you need to list both.

For this I would use "youth, sport, fundraising, sports, youth sport
fundraising, youth fundraising"

I also include phrases.  In the early days I would have used only "youth,
sport, fundraising" but I saw my websites slip against the competition that
was using phrases.  If I feel that 5% or more of the folks might use "youth
sport fundraising" as a phrase, I include that.  It seems to add to the
ranking on some SE's.  In moderation this will not get you banned as a
spammer.

> 2. Do plurals count as different words:  cookie vs. cookies, club vs.
clubs?
> Do they need to both be listed.

I have found that the conventional wisdom of only using singular forms of
the words is incorrect.  Several of the search engines do not show the same
rankings for singular and plural forms. Hotbot and Webcrawler/Dogpile appear
to be the only ones that do.

> 3. Do capitals (other than proper names)  apply as in Pizza vs. pizza.

Meta tags are supposed to be all lowercase in the head.

The next obvious question would be, does it matter if capitalized or not in
the body text?   I do it both ways.  It depends on the SE.  This means you
have to have it both ways in the text to cover your bases.

> 4. Should the words be alphabetical or is there some ranking relation to
> relevance of the word to the site?

Many SE's rank according to number of times the word is used in the body
text( as long as not overused ) and or its placement in the page.... i.e.
nearer the top is better.   I have not heard of any alphabetical ranking.

> Hopefully this is not too off topic for this list.  If it is I would
> sincerely appreciate answers off line.  Also if anyone can point me to a
> site or book that could help with these questions.

searchenginewatch.com is considered by many to be the best site, but its
large and sometimes hard to locate what your looking for.  A better place
might be http://www.searchengineguide.org/

Remember that the two or three most important meta tags 'terms' need to be
in the title tag, in the description meta tag, in the first or largest
heading tag as well as spread out through the document.  Once again,
different SE's use different criteria and list different parts of your web
page.

Paul Wilson
webguroo(at)tampabay.rr.com


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