Explicitly Listing Keywords

You can explicitly tell search engines exactly what your page is about by specifying a list of relevant keywords.

To explicitly list keywords:

1.	In the head section of your page, type <meta name="keywords" content=".
2.	Type a few words or phrases that concisely describe the topic discussed on your page. Separate each word or phrase with a comma and a space.
3.	Type " /> to complete the meta tag.

Figure 24.3. If you want to emphasize to a search engine what your page is about, you can specify the keywords with a meta tag.

Tips

• Google ignores keywords specified with a meta tag. It's more interested in keywords that appear in the page's content.

• Use a combination of unique and more general words to describe the contents of your page. Chihuahua is unique, but dog may also net you some visitors who didn't realize they were interested in Chihuahuas (or couldn't spell it).

• Actually, adding misspelled keywords (in addition to correctly spelled ones) is not such a bad idea. You might offer several alternative spellings for foreign words.

• More words is not necessarily better. According to Paul Boutin (see page 361), the closer you match what a prospective visitor types (with no extra words), the higher up you'll get listed in the results.

• If you're using frames, include keywords in each frame and in the frameset itself.