I have to admit I have followed the guides suggesting adding meta KEYWORDS doesn't do anything. Although I did add them to some pages just to see what the difference would be. As far as I can tell it doesn't make any difference, but then I'm only seeing search results from Google. I'm guessing Yahoo and others are still dragging their heels indexing. Which kind of shows why they lag far behind Google for support among webmasters!
All I've done is optimize my pages and article descriptions to include keywords, and add a bit of original content creating internal links, then create links in from blogs, articles and forums. Within a month of doing this I'm appearing on Google UK search for two highly competitive keywords within the first two pages.
I'm on page 1 for several long-tail keywords too. Mostly within the first four results.
It does take time, and work. But I believe the primary driving force is combining original content with links into your site.
Did google not discuss recently that meat keywords were being given a little weight back after removing it because of the keyword spamming having calmed down ... ???
Sure i read that somewhere,
My personal opinion from sites ive worked is that they are given some weight but they still are only going to add to an already well written and optimised site, no one thing ever works on its own.
Rain
xxxx
Author
