Small Question about Meta Keywords

Hi guys, just a small questions:

assuming I want to rank for keyword "dog training" (I am not) and also for "dog training courses" (I am not). Is it ok to put in the meta keywords only the keyword "dog training courses" without "dog training"?

yes, it's OK. Although you can put both as well. Depends on how many keywords you want to put there, if only these two, I'd put both.

silvertroll said:

Hi guys, just a small questions:

assuming I want to rank for keyword "dog training" (I am not) and also for "dog training courses" (I am not). Is it ok to put in the meta keywords only the keyword "dog training courses" without "dog training"?

Click to expand...

From what i've been recently told here on these forums, it doesn't matter what keywords you put in the Meta Keyword tag, as it's almost completely de-valued by google.

However, every time i look at a top-ranking website within my niche who is obviously doing SEO, those sites always seem to have their Meta Keyword tag crammed with everything related to their niche... even 1-word keywords. Like, your example above... they'd put: "dog training, dog training courses, dog training course, dog trainers, training dogs, train dogs, dogs, dog, training, train"

So i don't really know...

Interesting.

I wouldn't mind putting so many keywords in the meta keywords, but I read somewhere that too many meta keywords can harm your site.

silvertroll said:

Hi guys, just a small questions:

assuming I want to rank for keyword "dog training" (I am not) and also for "dog training courses" (I am not). Is it ok to put in the meta keywords only the keyword "dog training courses" without "dog training"?

Click to expand...

According to Google, they do not use the meta keyword tag at all and have been ignoring it for years. They sometimes use the meta description tag for the excerpts that it shows in the search results, it doesn't use this for ranking either.

hxxp://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

That doesn't mean you shouldn't use the meta tags at all. They won't hurt anything and there are still other search engines that may still use them.

For Google, keyword rich content and relevant high quality backlinks are your best bet for ranking your page.

silvertroll said:

Interesting.

I wouldn't mind putting so many keywords in the meta keywords, but I read somewhere that too many meta keywords can harm your site.

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I read that you should keep it to 5 max, but I try and make mine longer phrases.

My understanding is that, if you had a keyword of "dog training courses" then that should give you the following keyword variations:

dog
training
courses
dog training
dog courses
training courses
dog training courses

topsytips said:

I read that you should keep it to 5 max, but I try and make mine longer phrases.
...

Click to expand...

It still isn't going to make that big of a difference.
I posted some more information and sources about it in this thread:
[thread]191873[/thread]

You can keep discussing it all you want, but the bottom line is google ignores the keywords meta tag altogether, and the other SEs look at it but don't give it any weight. As far as optimizing for google the best way to use your keywords is to make sure you use them in the content of your page. That's why everyone is always talking about keyword density when discussing article writing. That's the most important way of using your keywords. Next would be to use them in a tag cloud somewhere in the body of your page, and be sure to stuff them into your image alt tags whenever possible.

If you want to rank high in google, you should have some good content that contains your keywords, and then work on getting good quality backlinks. The keyword density of your content is what you are indexed by, and the number and quality of your backlinks is what will get you ranked.