Keywords Meta Tag Generator
 Hermetic Systems
 
There are two versions of this software: basic (KWG) and advanced (KWGA).  The difference is that KWG acts only on single HTML (and PHP) files, whereas KWGA acts on multiple files in a single operation (but does not act on PHP files). If you need to do only one web page at a time then KWG is what you need. If you have many pages, e.g. more than 20, then you need KWGA. Click on this link for the KWGA page.

Author:
Peter Meyer
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Compatible with Windows 7

Don't be misled by claims for "free keywords meta tag generators". These require you to select keywords, and simply output a meta tag containing those keywords. The software described here actually scans any specified HTML or PHP document on your PC and extracts the most frequent and emphasized words, which are then used to create a meta tag to be inserted into that document.

This program does not act directly on files located on your web server. It acts on files located on a PC. After the keywords meta tag has been created and inserted into your HTML or PHP document, that document must be uploaded to your web server.

There is disagreement as to how important it is to include a keywords meta tag. Even if it is not, this program can be useful, because it generates a list of the most frequently used words in your HTML document together with their keyword densities. This can tell you if certain words are over-used, or if a particularly important word is under-used. In addition, such a list can be a big help in composing a suitable description meta tag.

Introduction

As every HTML author knows, an HTML document has two parts, the header, between <HEAD> and </HEAD>, and the body, between <BODY> and </BODY>. Within the header there may be so-called META tags. One of these is the KEYWORDS meta tag.

The keywords meta tag is intended to provide search engines, when spidering a web page, with a list of words (called "keywords") which assist in retrieving the web page when someone searches the web using one or more of those keywords. (Keywords are also used by web services other than search engines, e.g., shareware sites.) However it is tedious to create a keywords meta tag by hand, especially for a large document, since you have to think of what keywords best characterize the web page. Keywords Meta Tag Generator assists in search engine optimization by automating the creation of a keywords meta tag based on the words most often used in the page and the way they are used (in bold, etc.). But the process of selecting keywords automatically requires more fine-tuning than simply identifying the most-commonly occurring words, which in any case are likely to be irrelevant words such as "for", "the" and "of".

Here is a typical screenshot:

screenshot

Search engines follow links from one web page to another, indexing content as they go. If you want the search engines to know what a particular page is about, and rank it appropriately, you must include keywords in your text. This establishes your site's relevance for words that searchers use when they're looking for your product or service.

This program also provides the keyword density for the words found (this is the number of occurrences of a keyword divided by the total number of words in the document; see below for an example). This is useful information because if an important keyword has a keyword density of less than 1% it is less likely to be noticed by a search engine spider, whereas a word with a keyword density of more than 4% might seem suspicious.

How the Program Works

Keywords Meta Tag Generator works basically by counting the number of occurrences of words in your HTML document and building the keywords meta tag from the most-frequently used words (ignoring common words such as "the" and "which"). Thus the meta tag helps search engines by including the most commonly used words on your web page.

The program handles text in languages other than English (more on this below). It does not, however, just use word frequencies, but assigns more (or less or no) importance to words which occur:

Of course, the HTML tags do not have to be in upper case, as above; they can also be in lower case (as in XHTML-compliant pages).

The program allows you to specify the weight (or emphasis) given to words occurring in these contexts. You can either just accept the default values (this generally produces good results) or you can fine-tune the weighting as follows:

The program automatically adjusts the weight given to words in <Hn> and <FONT> tags as follows:

Keywords Meta Tag Generator ignores anything in the body of the document which is within HTML tags, within comments or within <SCRIPT ... /SCRIPT> or <STYLE ... /STYLE> so it can be used with HTML documents which use cascading style sheets, have lots of embedded javascript or were generated by some WYSIWYG web page creator. Following the usual practice with search engines, no distinction is made between singular and plural forms of words (usually).

Pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions and number words are ignored. Unlikely keywords such as gerunds (e.g., "bringing") are also ignored (except where these are nouns in common use, such as "training").

It is advisable to run an HTML validation utility on your HTML document before using this software because an error such as a missing ">", as in:

<td><img src="line.gif"</td>

may cause some text to be missed or may even cause the program to cease counting words at the point where the unterminated tag occurs.

Adjusting Operation

As noted above, this program does not act directly on files located on your web server. It acts on files located on a PC. After the keywords meta tag has been created and inserted into your HTML document, that document must be uploaded to your web server.

The input file (the file which is acted on) must have a name with an extension which is either php or includes (but is not limited to) htm, e.g., html and shtml. (See more on PHP files below.) It is selected (by clicking on Input file) in the usual way:

If the document already has a keywords meta tag then you can display it by clicking on Show existing keywords, etc.. This also shows any existing title and description.

You can tell the program to ignore:

You can require that only words which occur a specified minimum number of times should be considered for inclusion in the keywords meta tag. This does not apply to words within the <TITLE> tag or words within the description or the existing keywords meta tag. Thus you can require that words in the body of the document must occur at least twice, yet words in the title, etc., will still be candidates for the meta tag even if they occur there only once.

You can specify the maximum number of keywords in the meta tag (30 is recommended) and the maximum length in bytes of the meta tag.

After you have specified the input file and the controlling parameters you can either:

  1. click on List words to get a list of the words satisfying the selection criteria, together with their keyword values, frequencies and densities, as at right (the highest value is always 100) or

  2. click on Generate/show keywords meta tag to get the meta tag, as below.

If you want some words to be included as phrases you can type them into the Begin meta tag with textbox:

Then pressing Generate/show keywords meta tag gives the revised meta tag:

You can edit the keywords directly:

Then copy to clipboard and paste into the header section of your HTML document. Or perhaps better, first copy the keywords meta tag to the clipboard, paste it into your HTML document and then edit it there.

You have a choice as to whether the program should attempt to preserve upper and lower case in keywords, or to put all keywords into lower case. It is likely that all search engines ignore case, so generally it doesn't matter whether you check this or not.

If Keep upper/lower case in keywords is checked then the software conflates the values for any two words which are in lower case except perhaps for the first letter and which are the same except for the case of the first letter, and it treats the combined values as those for the word in lower case. For example, if the program finds 10 instances of "Tower" and 20 instances of "tower" then it will treat these as 30 instances of "tower" and no instances of "Tower". This avoids the problem (which would otherwise arise) of words which are at the start of a sentence, and thus capitalized, not contributing to the total for that word (assuming that the case of the initial letter should not be regarded as significant).

After the keywords meta tag has been generated you can tell the software to insert it into the HTML document (any existing keywords meta tag will be replaced). Optionally you can tell the software to make a backup copy of the original file before the insertion.

Title and Description Tags

Different search engines give more or less weight to the keywords meta tag when ranking a page. But they all regard the title tag as important and sometimes display the description tag in the search result. So you can use the keywords generated by this software as a guide to writing your title and description tags. It is reported that some search engines currently display the description tag when all of the search terms occur in the page's title tag. Thus if you use a title tag containing your most important keywords then a search on those keywords, if it results in an entry in the search results, may also cause your description tag to be displayed.

The value specified for "Minimum frequency for word" (in order to be considered for inclusion in the meta tag) does not apply to words in titles or descriptions. Thus a word may occur once in the title and never in the text and still appear in the meta tag.

Working with non-English Files

Keywords Meta Tag Generator works with HTML documents in languages other than English, more exactly, in any language which can be encoded in WinLatin1 (a.k.a. the Windows 1252 character set), which includes most European languages.

The Language setting is significant only when Ignore common words is checked, since this tells the program which set of common words to use. Six files are provided with common words in six languages. The files are in the application folder (usually a folder somewhere below the Program files folder, and are named:

Language English French German Italian Portuguese Spanish
File name cmwds_en.txt cmwds_fr.txt cmwds_de.txt cmwds_it.txt cmwds_pt.txt cmwds_es.txt

These files can be edited to remove or add common words. The words do not have to be in alphabetical order, but the files should consist only of text.

The software allows you to select Another language. In this case the program looks for a file named cmwds_xx.txt as containing common words. It's also possible to combine two of the common words files, e.g., cmwds_en.txt and cmwds_de.txt, into cmwds_xx.txt, in which case (if Another language is selected) the program would ignore words which are common words either in English or in German.

In the case of German the Keep upper/lower case in keywords should always be checked.

Here's an example of a keywords meta tag produced for a document in German:

And in French:

Unix-type Files

It may happen that an HTML document is created on a computer running Unix or Linux and then sent to a computer running Windows. Such a file can be uploaded to a server and browsers will display it correctly, but some utility programs written to run under Windows may not be able to function with it. This is because Unix/Linux text files use different bytes to mark ends of lines than are used in DOS/Windows text files.

Keywords Meta Tag Generator is not intended to work with such files, but if it is applied to such a file the program will detect that it is a Unix/Linux-type file and will display a notice of such. The program can still process such files but the speed of operation is slower (and is slower in proportion to the size of the file).

PHP Files

By popular request Keywords Meta Tag Generator now works not only with HTML files but also with PHP files. It skips over all PHP sections, that is, code within <? and ?>. (Thus PHP sections can begin not only with <?php but also with <?=, as in <?=$s?>.) This implies that displayed text which is output using echo will not be scanned. Also text contained within PHP arrays will not be scanned. In other words, with PHP files this program scans only text which is outside a PHP section. Thus it should be used only with PHP files whose displayable text is mostly of this kind.

The only difference in the functioning of the program for HTML files and PHP files is that, in the latter case, insertion of the generated keywords meta tag into the document will always be accompanied by the creation of a backup copy of the original file. This is because, since the structure of the PHP file is unknown, it is too risky to insert the meta tag without making a backup.

For a version of this software which acts on multiple files in multiple folders in a single operation see Keywords Meta Tag Generator Advanced Version.

For a description of more general word-counting software (not specialized for producing keywords meta tags) see Hermetic Word Frequency Counter.

Virus-free How to obtain the software: A copy of the Keywords Meta Tag Generator software can be downloaded from this website. Click on the link below to go to a web page with further information:

Download Keywords Meta Tag Generator ...


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Price and ordering: The price for a single-user license is given at Purchase a User License. An activation key is required in order to make the trial version fully functional. An activation key can be obtained immediately if purchasing either via PayPal or via Share-it.

webhostingsearch - recommended web tool award Refund: A refund will be provided promptly up to 30 days after purchase if the software does not perform satisfactorily.

Updates: Purchasers of a user license for this software are entitled to an update to any later version at no additional cost.

Upgrading to the Advanced Version: Purchasers of a user license for this software may upgrade to a license for Keywords Meta Tag Generator Advanced Version by paying $15.95, €12.25 or £9.95. To purchase the upgrade click on one of the links below. Note that this is available only if a single-user license for this basic version has already been purchased.

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