Submitted by: GL Drummond from FeralIntensity.com

I'm a curious sort, so I often view the source of web pages I enjoy. I'm often surprised by how few place metatags on each page of their sites, and even more surprised by either a complete lack of keywords, or keywords that aren't appropriate for the site's/page's content. 

Metatags and keywords are two of the important ingredients to build a successful website. "Success" meaning that the site receives a good traffic yield, good SE rankings, and a nice Google page rank. 

Your keywords, in particular, can either build those, or harm those. 

Keywords such as 'the, that, my' (which I've actually seen in use) are used because some people think since they are such common words, they'll help a website to show up in search engine results. 

Wrong. Using words such as those will actually HURT your website. Many search engines actually detract from your site's 'score' for using such words. 

Start simple. For example, my website is built around my CG fantasy art. My beginning keywords reflected that: 

art, fantasy, computer, generated, 3D, 2D, digital, CG, Poser, dragons, buxom, babes, chicks, chainmail, elves, warriors, gargoyles, women, nudes,

Then, I got into trying to sell prints of my work, so I added more keywords:

posters, shopping, prints, sensual, erotic

I don't use my name, or the names of famous fantasy artists. Not many people are going to know who I am, they're just going to be looking for fantasy art, dragon art, nude fantasy art. I don't post images or articles about famous fantasy artists, so that would be misleading to use those as keywords. Some people do, but I think you'd lose out on future return visits by misleading your first time visitors. 

Twenty keywords is plenty. What is your site about? What are a few of the words that appear the most in your textual content, that aren't 'the, they, me' types of common words? 

Use those...and spend a little time every month checking your stats to see what visitors used in order to find your site from search engines, to keep track of which keywords are working out well. 

Hope this proves helpful! 

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