I have been told to add commas by one person and not add commas by another.

For example.

Stanley Web Design Development Jason

or

Stanley Web Design, Web Development, Jason Stanley


One person told me that by removing the commas then all words will be considered. So in the top example it would work out that if I searched for 'Jason Stanley'. This page had something to do with Jason Stanley.

The other person said that commas must be used. In example 1 search engines don't do the maths and you need to specify key words and phrases individually. Like I have in example 2.

Can someone clarify which, if either, are correct.

You want to go with comma's as the "keywords" part of the meta tag is deceptive. It is actually key phrases that you separate with commas.

I've always used commas. I think to not use them might dilute the results but it might be worth a test.

You can add maximum 4to 5 keywords in meta keyword tags seperated by commas. Keep commas at end of the keywords otherwise it doesn't identify as keyword.

Haha....a maximum of 4 to 5 keywords. That sounds incorrect, what is your source?

http://www.seologic.com/faq/meta-keywords.php

Yes I agree with you, keywords/ keyphrases should be separated by commas..

This post has been edited by PuppyWebsite: Jun 29 2008, 10:13 AM

I barely ever use meta keywords but when I do I never use more than 9

This post has been edited by EggManJohn: Oct 16 2008, 06:44 PM

I feel like I'm following you around the forum replying to old threads, John!! (cause I am?)

Anyway, here's a useful resource for developers with regard to SEO: SEO Web Developer Cheat Sheet (PDF)

Yes that's great resource We actually trained Rebecca from SEOmoz at the company I worked for previously

I'm going to print out that cheat sheet and keep it handy!

Hey guys,

This one is pretty simple when you analyze the logic.

Commas can be used in grammar to separate thoughts (or ideas). So, when you use commas to separate words in terms of SEO, you are essentially telling the engine that these are separate thoughts.

There are ups and downs to this, and my advice would be to use both methods. Take a look...

For Stanley Web Design Development Jason

First off, this doesn't make any sense. Anytime you use keywords, with or without commas, it should be grammatically correct. What would someone think if they read this?

Now, let's analyze what's going on here (without changing it.) Your possible keyphrases are...
Stanley Web, Web Design, Web Development, Stanley Development, Stanley Web Design, Stanley Jason, Jason Stanley, Web Design & Development (& is omitted in serps), Stanley Web Development, etc.

Now for Stanley Web Design, Web Development, Jason Stanley

Your keyphrases are...
Stanley Web Design, Web Development, Jason Stanley, Web Design, Stanley Design

See the difference? Obviously you will end up with additional keyphrases in the second example, but understand that they will be weighed differently. I would suggest using something like this...

Web Design & Development by Jason Stanley

This simple statement will generate all of the keyphrases in the first example. Depending on your serps you would then change this to alter your weight. An example...

Web Design & Development by Jason Stanley, a web designer with over 1,000 years development experience.

Get where this is going? The next step would be adding in more variations. (like I did with "designer" above) Also, bold and italics provide a lot of weight also, so put those in where you can.

Hope this helps!
Rich

Yes. You are right EggManJohn we should not use more than 9 meta keywords per webpage. and also we can use keyword proximity also.

The most important thing to keep it looking like a human wrote it.
In case a search engine does pay attention to it, being more humanlike is better.
In particular, use a combeination of commas and no commas to
hold keyphrases together. You can't differentiate between keyphrases and keywords unless
you use a comma and a space.