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Could you please tell me that what is the maximum length for meta keywords?

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    They can be as long as the max time that you are willing to waste in filling them in. Meta keywords are useless!
    – Marco Demaio
    Commented Aug 5, 2011 at 17:23
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    Abused by Dumbhat SEO specialists, so any search engine worth its salt ignores the piece of spam. We actually had one SEO specialist call up last week all breathless because one of the major problems with our site was that we have no Meta Keyword tag. We repurposed the table entry as a search source internal to our CMS software search function. The moment any SEO specialist mentions keyword meta tags is the time to demand they never call back and hang up the phone.
    – Fiasco Labs
    Commented Jun 15, 2013 at 4:51

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FYI, meta keywords have no effect on SEO whatsoever.

There is no official length requirement but generally you'll see people mention anywhere from 100 to 255 characters. Just be sure to put in the words that match your page's content and don't worry about anything else.

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    John is 100% correct for Google and Bing. It is possible other search engines use Meta Keywords but most likely not because of how easy it is to "stuff" or abuse the tag.
    – Ben Hoffman
    Commented Aug 3, 2011 at 13:11
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    I recall hearing that Yahoo is the only company that actually looks at them, however that was before they licensed the Bing code, so in terms of search (i.e. Bing and Google) the keywords tag is a waste of time. In some CMS platforms they're used for internal searches however -- if say you're searching for a post on a topic
    – theonlylos
    Commented Aug 3, 2011 at 20:04
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Meta Keywords doesn't make any improvements in SEO, use Meta Description instead.

Google says "Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years"

FYI, different search engines show different number of characters of meta description and title tags.

Ref: http://www.sagerock.com/blog/title-tag-meta-description-length/

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  • 'Description insted' ?! - Keywords and Description have different purpose and it is not clear if Keywords have impact on SEO :)
    – bteo
    Commented May 23, 2013 at 17:16
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Anything you want, there is no limit.

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    Correct, there is no limit. Bear in mind though, that increasing the letter count in your meta increases the code to text ratio, which DOES have an impact on SEO. I actually don't pay close attention to them, since their value to SEO is nill, but if I can generate the keywords automatically, I tend to keep it down to 100-160 characters max.
    – David K.
    Commented Aug 4, 2011 at 11:30
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    There is a limit. The search engines will stop reading them at some point. Even if it only is because the crawler reaches the max file size for the page.
    – John Conde ♦
    Commented Aug 4, 2011 at 12:05
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<TITLE> - As shorter is better for your keywords. I use 3 - 6 words and separate them with "|".

Example:

<title>Keyword Phrase 1 | Keyword 2</title>

<DESCRIPTION>

Before I filled this meta with keywords and tried to make it interesting for users but now I leave this meta tag empty and it works not bed. I mean Search Engine generates the description automatically and yanks the best snippets.

<KEYWORDS>

I don't pay attention on it. I lost the value now.

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    This is suboptimal. Up to 6 words separated might look spammy. And if you don't write the description = snippet yourself, you throw away the opportunity to catch a visitor with something handcrafted.
    – initall
    Commented Oct 25, 2012 at 11:22
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Just as an FYI - Google no longer places any SEO emphasis on the Keyword meta-tag.

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Have a look at these videos from Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Webspam team:

more meta keywords info from the official Google Webmasters help Youtube channel

Why are you even considering this question, are you doing SEO for a local search engine that uses them? Please tell us your reason behind the choice so that we can help you more.

As for the length, put any amount you wish - it really does not matter if there are 3 or 333 words in it.

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  • Well said. If the length is regarding Google and SEO (as everyone seems to be assuming), then zero. If the keywords are read by an internal search service that actually utilizes them in its algorithm, then it depends on that specific search software. We need more context from the OP.
    – Clint Pachl
    Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 2:42
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The question asked no longer makes any sense in the current environment.

Google and all other major search engines like Yahoo, Bing have disqualified the Meta keyword tag long before.

So even if you're adding the meta keyword tag in your webpages, Google and all other search engines are never going to take a look at that meta and you are never going to get any SEO benefit out of it.

So it's better to concentrate on Title, Description, Body content of the webpage to make SEO work for you.

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Please go to Youtube and search with "matt cutts meta keywords". See this Google webmaster page for some meta tags Google supports. The "keywords attribute" section here on wikipedia pretty nice sums up all there is to say about it.

In general: The most important search engines mostly ignore it, so don't waste time with it. As others noted, there is no official length limit, but if your keyword list has as much words as your main content it might look spammy ;-)

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7 to 8 general keywords with comma separated is good to put on all pages of your site.

Some peoples put huge list which is over optimization. Keywords must be related to your content or meta description.

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  • Huge list which is no optimization. For SEO to work, the tag must be used and search engines pretty much dumped keywords meta because of Dumbhat SEO keyword stuffing. The beginning of the end back in time was when porn sites started using Oshkosh bgosh as a keyword.
    – Fiasco Labs
    Commented Jun 15, 2013 at 4:48
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There is no limit of meta keywords.

Why you are wasting your time in creating meta keywords tag to your website or blog. Note that google doesn't use meta keyword tags for ranking.

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    Do you have references to back up assertions that there are no limits and that Google doesn't use them? Keep in mind that this question was asked years ago and that your answer doesn't say anything that isn't already covered in other answers.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Jul 1, 2014 at 19:45

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