GMChost.com Webmaster Guide

Question from a subscriber: "This is driving me crazy: If I have a client who makes metal stakes, spears and rods, as well as wooden stakes, spears and rods, is this the best way to do the keyword meta tags?:

<META name="keywords" content="stakes, spears, rods, wooden, metal">

I'm concerned that the following would be penalized for repetition:

<META name="keywords" content="wooden stakes, wooden spears, wooden rods, metal stakes, metal spears, metal rods">

What do you think?

Answer: First of all, don't sweat this too much. Search engines weigh the keyword text in the meta tags the SAME as the page's body text -- IF they weigh it at all. Simply put, it just doesn't matter that much.

I'd suggest focusing more on the title and the heading text <h1> areas than with the meta tag stuff. The fact is, you don't even need meta tags to score if those words are in the body. It is, however, an excellent place (meta tags) to put synonyms and related words that may not be in the document itself, including misspellings.

In other words, try something like this:

<META name="keywords" content="stakes, spears, rods, wooden, metal, pierce, impale, lance, shaft, poles, metallic">

That throws a few synonyms in there, but again ...don't worry about that meta keyword area too much. Instead, concentrate on the title and headings closely. Perhaps as a title: "Stakes, spears and rods available in wood or metal" would be a suggestion for this topic.

Note: The above article has also been used via the generosity of Planet Ocean Communications. They have literally hundreds of tips and articles on their site with new ones each month. Unfortunately, they'll only let me dip into their resource library so far. If you want to access everything they have, you'll need to subscribe for $97 for six months (which also includes their Unfair Advantage book). However, if your time is valuable like mine, it's a small price to pay for the in-depth research these guys do.

http://www.searchenginehelp.com/positioning/

Editor's Note: Although you should not worry too much about repetition in meta tags, you should avoid listing the same keyword twice in a row even if separated by a comma. Repeating the same word one after another could get you penalized for spamming. As the Planet Ocean article suggested, focus on including synonyms to your primary keyword that do not otherwise appear much on the page. You may grab some extra rankings that way.