meta keyword

[merickson]

I'm putting the finishing touches on my site.

My site has an entry page and several sub-pages.
My question is about the META KEYWORD tag.

From what I have gathered on the web:
1)DESCRIPTION is as important as KEYWORD, if not more.
2)Only the first 15 keywords really count.
3)It doesn't really matter, since most search engines now count the words in the BODY rather than the META KEYWORDS. (Which is wierd, since my bench plans will score low on a search for "woodworking plans" but high on a search for "screw".)

OK now my question,
If I put the keywords for my subpages on my portal page, I run out of space. Should I omit the sub-descriptions on my portal page? I have heard that if the search engines find many pages to the same site, they think that is an attempt to manipulate them and slap my hands.

On the other hand, its a small personal site and its going to be at the bottom of any search.

[WebWizard]

1) DESCRIPTION is as important as KEYWORD, if not more.

- Tes, More search engines use the DESCRIPTION tag than use teh KEYWORD tag!

2) Only the first 15 keywords really count.
- Depends upon the search engine! - Some will allow more, others truncate the keywords to a miximum of 15. This is becuase you should be able to use a few consise keywords (that don't appear in the DESCRIPTION tag) to describe your content, rather than hundreds of keywords and their variations!

3) It doesn't really matter, since most search engines now count the words in the BODY rather than the META KEYWORDS.
- I think it's the other way around - if a search engine indexes EVERY word on each page, it's database is going to be massive!! - I think many of the major search engines use keywords, or just a simple 'extract' of the page's content - like the first line...


You could put different keywords on all you pages, but it's best to put some generic ones, that describe you entire site, on your front page! - and if you can't keep this below 20 words, when people search for your site, the results won't be as accurate!


With regards to your question on indexing multiple pages - you can control how search engines index pages using the 'ROBOTS' meta tag!

Kind Regards,
Mark Harrington,
The WebWizard - A 'Fully-Featured' HTML Editor for your WebBrowser!
Check us out at: http://www.the-webwizard.co.uk/

[merickson]

If I have two pages.
page A tells robots to INDEX, FOLLOW, and also leads to B

page B tells robots to NOINDEX, FOLLOW

Will the word search results for B be credited to A?