Question about Meta Tag keyword separation and Dreamweaver

[jpf566]

OK I have a question… Pretty much ever site that I see has meta tags set up like this..

<meta name="Keywords" content="Expensive, High Quality, Fantastic, Other Keyword, Another Keyword />

They are all separated by commas….NOW with Dreamweaver if you go to Insert/HTML/Keyword a box pops up and if you list all your keywords, dreamweaver puts this in the code…

<meta name="Keywords" content="Expensive
High Quality
Fantastic
Other Keyword
Another Keyword />

My question is, should I be putting a comma in the keyword list thingy within dreamweaver? Or is what dreamweaver is spitting out good?

[beu]

You want to use commas

[virtuaffinity]

I think this must be due to your settings within dreamweaver. I use dreamweaver and have never seen this. In the popup box you should enter them in a single line with commas separating them like,

keyword1,keyword2,keyword3,keyword4,you,get,the,id ea

If you enter them on separate lines by hitting return after each word then you'll end up with the formatting your suggesting above.

[Jimbobwai]

I am taking over an account that has been seo already. The keyword tags have no commas - on purpose. I am told this was the methodology of a well known company. Any thoughts on leaving commas out of a keyword list?

[jimbeetle]

Any thoughts on leaving commas out of a keyword list?
Each keyword or keyword phrase is a "token", each token should be separated by commas.

[Jazajay]

I think the keyword tag is a waste of time.
It has no real value and just adds bloat to your code, which hinders indexing.

Just remove it

Jaza

[jimbeetle]

You're absolutely right, Jaz, as always (for the most part), but there are two sides, and as happens I'm the conflicted one that comes from both.

Yeah, as a coder, why add a line or two of fluff when we know that Yahoo is the only major search engine that might even look at it, let alone consider it? Keep it lean and mean.

To the writer/editor in me, that comparatively few bytes, along with the meta description, acts as a check. Did I actually cover everything I wanted to? Did I use related terms, supporting terms, synonyms? Yeah, it helps me when I write, a discipline.

Anyway, back to the core topic -- to comma or not to comma. Here's the blurb from the Mike Grehan interview with Yahoo's Jon Glick (http://www.e-marketing-news.co.uk/april_2004.html) back in 2004.

Each keyword is an individual token separated by commas. So that's that. You want to separate these things with commas and not just put one long string of text. The more keywords that are put in and the more they're repeated, the much larger the chance our spam team is going to want to check out that page. It doesn't mean that page is going to get any specific judgement. But it is very much a red flag. For best practice you just need to remember it's for matching - not ranking. Repeating the same word 20 times is only going to raise a red flag... It doesn't increase your likelihood of showing up on any given set of search results. It's just a risk with no benefit.

Folks, that's just a fast quote about using keyowrds, don't depend on me. To get more, read the entire interview. Even though parts of it are only good for historic reference by now (SiteMatch, etc.), it's still a good read that outlines much of the underlying Yinktomi approach to search.

[beu]

To add to what jimbeetle said, if you must keyword and use dreamyweaver then you should comma but not comma+space.

IE "keyword,keyword" & not "keyword, keyword"

;)

[Jazajay]

Don't get me wrong Jim you where answering the question, and Yahoo may still use it but to me, who's so sad when it comes to code, and remove every extra white space, therefore adding an extra 100 - 200 characters seems madness. But I am sad :(

But then again I'm a sad coder and not a writer so I can see where you are coming from TBH.

Just out of curiosity though Beu why -

..."keyword,keyword" & not "keyword, keyword"


Jaz

[beu]

Just out of curiosity though Beu why -

"Some indexing engines look for META elements that define a comma-separated list of keywords/phrases, or that give a short description. Search engines may present these keywords as the result of a search. The value of the name attribute sought by a search engine is not defined by this specification. Consider these examples,

<META name="keywords" content="vacation,Greece,sunshine">"

- http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/appendix/notes.html#recs

Also, if you are going to waste space you might as well waste as little as possible in my opinion. Honestly, I wouldn't waste my time with keyword meta.

[Jazajay]

if you are going to waste space you might as well waste as little as possible in my opinion
Good point.