Commas in META Keywords

Is there an advantage in not having commas seperating your keyword?

Commas are seperators of keyphrases. Having said that, a keyphrase can be comprised of a single word.

Here are some examples of keyphrases for a chocolae shop.

Candy, Chocolate Candy, Chocolate, Chocolate Gifts, Chocolate Bunnies.

As you can see, there are 5 keyphrases, 2 of them are single words.

I personally don't use commas. When I do my KW phrases I will take my most important and go from their. Using the example provided


Chocolate Candy Chip Gifts Bunnies Kisses etc etc

I don't duplate my KW within the kw meta, I simply list the ones that are on the page in the order of importance leaving out the stop words.

Turn the question around:

What advantage is there to repeat some of your keywords in multiple, comma separated, keyphrases? So why not use the method GC describes? It's clean, modern, and flexible and it avoids any probable spam filter if executed like that (i.e. NOT with dozens of words, maybe even unrelated to the page content....)

I use the keyword meta tag for mispellings (or is it misspellings) and try to work all of the different keywords and phrases into the content of the page. It seems like in the last year or so the search engines put very little value on keywords.

I do exactly what GC describes and have always had the best of luck with this method.

i think comma's help, its an obvious break, between keywords or phrazes, but thats just my opinion,
Also: it cant do any harm, ive never heard of any bad results from people using commas as of yet, so i Just use them anyway unless its (specifically specified)* not to
*that just doesnt look right on paper

This conversation on whether to use commas or not goes back and forth. I'm on the side of commas. I believe this because I'd rather be able to set off my keyword phrases, things I want to shoot for, rather than having the words out there, only being used once. So, if I want to say "purple baby bunnies" and "purple baby rabbits", I can type it that way because those might be search terms I hope someone will search for.

I assume the other side figures if one types in all the words, such as "purple baby bunnies rabbits" without the commas that it might help improve the possibility of the search engines finding you. It might, or might not, as the next step is how you decide to try to optimize your page.

I don't think it matters if ones terms aren't so generic. If they are, well, I can't see how it wouldn't help to specifically say what you're hoping people are looking for.

Meta Keyword is irrelevant and totally obsolete technique to ordered ranks thus any position on whether to, or not to, use commas is an absolutely obsolete discussion.

e.g. It is pointless today to discuss how you can get to the other side of the world when the Earth is flat simply because common thinking back in the 15th century was that the Earth was flat...

Proving the Earth round makes the aforemention question a historical non-event.

Since every SEO newsletter I receive is still talking about the relevance of meta keywords, I'd like to know your opinion on why you don't believe they're relevant. Even on this forum, and others, it's still 3 - 1 in favor. And, if there's some historical data I can link to, it would help and be fully appreciated. If it's just opinion,... okay then.

Written by?

What qualifications do they have?

What experience?

What sources do they use?

Your 3-1 indeed... compared the SEO abilities of the 3 to that of the 1 and you will find some interesting data that shows a reverse of your 3:1 to be 1:15

Can't tell you the sources they use, but we've got the Site Reference Newsletter and the Entireweb Newsletter and the SEO News Newsletter. All of their sites are highly ranked by both Google and Yahoo and that word you'd like me not to use, and, though this may sound like attacking and it's not, come up higher than your site or my site does, in spades (yes, I checked out your site; mine is only two weeks old, in case you decide to check my page rank). Now, you can negate them as hacks, in which case it says I would never be able to give you a reference you'd like, so, as you'd said in one of your responses to me, it would then become pointless to discuss.

So, I'll stick with my 3:1 ratio against yours, since, with mine, the proof is in the numbers.

This thread started on April 19th, 2005, 02:15 PM ... 1 1 & 2/3 years ago.

And someone asked a question about it today,... or rather yesterday, at this hour.