Many people still seem to think that building a website will mean they will appear at the top of Google for the products they sell. Then they think that the answer is to add keywords to their homepage. Obviously, it is natural for a webmasters is to to want their website ranking in the top of Google’s search results, but with so many factors determining ranking, it can sometimes seem an endless battle in getting all the elements right on your site.

Well, Google’s Matt Cutts has confirmed there is definitely one task you can remove from your list.

Matt was recently asked if spending time optimising keyword meta tags is actually useful. His short answer was: “Don’t waste your time!”

Keyword meta tags are not used by Google in determining your ranking, so concentrate your efforts on the other meta tags, especially the title & description tags, which may be used in the search results if Google sees them as being useful.

A keyword rich title tag together with an effective & relevant description meta data can be very useful in enticing searchers to click on your search engine listing, as they think they will find good information on your page.

So, you should definitely spend time on title & description meta tags, but Matt says he personally wouldn’t spend any time at all on keyword meta tags.

Use the keyword phrase in your title tag

The title tag is one of the most important tags on your Web page. And placing your keyword phrase in the title tag, preferably at the beginning, is very important to get that phrase into the search engines. Plus, that puts your keyword phrase as the link in the search engine index.

Get a domain with your keyword phrase

Putting your keyword phrase in your domain name is a great way to optimize for that phrase so use the keyword phrase in your URL.

Even if you can’t get your keywords into your domain name, you can put them into your URL’s. Search engines read the URL’s and assign value to the text they find there.

Use your keyword phrase a lot, but not too much

The ratio of your keywords to the rest of the text on your page is called the keyword density. It’s important to repeat your keywords in your document, but not too much. Keyword density should be between 3 and 7% for your primary keyword phrase and 1-2% for any secondary keywords or keyword phrases.