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<< Javascript bug not IE's faultPreventing Duplicate Content >> Quite often after you SEO a client's website, they will right-click their new site and have a gander at the META keywords to see if you have done a good job or not. Because SEO is all about META keywords right?

Well, not so much anymore.

After not bothering with Meta Keywords for some time now, I have finally come up with a simple solution - download at the bottom of this page.

About META Keywords

The value of Meta keywords is debateable these days, and SEOs tend to have different opinions.

• Some will say they are very important, and should be customised for every page.
  
• Others will tell you that you should choose a good list of words and include them in your template so the same words are used throughout your site.
  
• Others believe that you will actually get penalised by Google if you include keywords in your META tags that don't actually appear within the content on the page.
  
• Others will tell you they are worthless, and you should just leave them blank, or just use them for your homepage.

I'm still making up my mind as to what I believe, and without doing exhaustive research on the subject, I'll either have to go with other experts say, or do what I think makes sense.

META Keywords generator script

Here's what I think META Keywords should look like...

• Keywords should be space seperated (not comma seperated). This will allow Search engines to pick up keyword phrases, not just individual words.
• Keywords should actually appear on the page. I'm not convinced that meta keywords add that much value anyway, so why risk Google thinking your site is spam.
• Keywords should not be repeated at all (looks spammy), and should not contain common words such as this, the, and etc.
• You should be spending your time optimising other parts of your site. Time spent playing around with meta keywords is time that could be spent link building or writing fresh content.

To that end, I have written a simple PHP function that automates the creation of meta keywords so they are different on each page, and are reasonably relevant. This is ideal for dynamic websites, where you have too many pages to customise each tag manually. By letting the function create your meta keywords, you can spend your time on something more productive.

Features:

• Simple PHP function. Takes a string containing page content as input.
• Returns a space-separated list of meta keywords.
• No duplicate keywords in list.
• You specify the maximum number of words to return (I recommend 15 - 30, YMMV).
• Only returns words that actually appear on the page.
• Removes unwanted "noisewords" defined within the function (Sorry, English only at this stage - would welcome any translations done)
• Very unlikely to be considered spam by search engines (ie it follows the rules).
• In my opinion, better than no keywords, or the same keywords site-wide.
• Licensed under LGPL, feel free to use for whatever purpose. Would appreciate feedback if you find this useful.

Download

metakeywords.zip

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