I recently had a kind reviewer add some keywords to some cards. I was not happy! My keywords were worked out to exactly use the 250 characters allowed to the best advantage. The extra keywords added in the middle chopped off better words from the end of the list! I had to go through and re edit and check the whole section.
I am sounding ungrateful here, but my point is that with the search terms needed to find our cards, we need more spaces in the keyword box! The permutations on "aged 7" etc. alone take up loads of space, and I can never fit them in.
Its all very well asking us to put extra words like 'lace like' (see thread http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/forum/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1295643608) into the keywords, but how about giving us extra spaces in the keyword box to do it? I have to cut a lot of descriptive words from my keywords because of lack of space. Too long and they just get cut off. We need at least 100 more characters.
Can the CGU team look at this and extend the box a little?

Hi, i just tested it, and the keywords are removed if you go over the limit. When you go into manage cards and edit, they are cut off at the 250 letter limit and are no longer there.
I agree with you about spamming keywords, but we need keywords to help customers find our cards when searching, and the variants on 7th birthday card for example, (just a few:7th birthday,7 birthday,7 years old,seven years old,7,) are tremendous. That is beside a physical description of the image.

First, I would like to say that it is very nice of the reviewer to add the additional keywords for us.  After all we want to sell cards.    
 
Regarding the request to add additional characters to the keywords, I would say I would really appreciate it too.  I'm glad you brought it up.  
 
Sometimes we have long keywords to spell out.  For instance, the keywords, Administrative Professionals Day, etc. are long and take up a lot of character spaces to start with, and there are other holidays that have long keywords to use as well.   Or when placing cards in the cancer categories and we spell out all the different types of cancers as keywords along with chemotherapy, radiation, etc, it doesn't leave much room for any other type of keyword that would be beneficial to selling the card.  
 
Another issue with the keyword box, is when we type all our keywords in and then find out after they have been approved that many have been cut off because of the limited number of character spacing.  So, could the keyword character box be fixed so it counts down properly and stops entering keywords when the characters are used up?
 
The reason I ask, is because a problem I encountered with keywords getting cut off was when I first started at GCU.  I placed a card in the business category and the last keyword I typed was associate.  Well unbeknownst to me, the "ociate" part of that word was cut off leaving a not so nice keyword remaining.  I was horrified when this happened as I didn't know it had happened til months later and I was checking that card.  I am now very careful which word I place at the end of the keyword list.  
 
I hope adding additional characters to the keyword box, and fixing the character keyword countdown to work properly can be addressed for us.  
 
Thank you.

" ... I placed a card in the business category and the last keyword I typed was associate.  Well unbeknownst to me, the "ociate" part of that word was cut off leaving a not so nice keyword remaining."
 
Sheryl, very funny!  Probably upset a few donkey farmers!
 
In regard to Doreen's post.  Yes I've heard said that about the keywords and only the first 20 or so will come up.  That is a falacy though as if all your keywords are there than any proper search engine will pull them up.  The key is your ranking in a search and that has not much of anything to do with keywords and more to do with meta tags and spyders.  The more a link is clicked on and the more matching meta tags the higher up you will show in a search.  As for GCU though all your keywords will come up in a search at the site, so if you had a critical keyword cut off and not available, your card won't come up in a search using that keyword.  So all keywords are of equal importance in a local search such as someone going to GCU and looking for a 67th Belated Birthday card for an aunt who likes yellow flowers.   If someone typed in belated birthday, aunt, 67 and you have all those keywords in your keyword box, then all those keywords will be searched and likely your card would come up with probably not more than a couple of others which would be that specific.  Say you only had room for birthday and belated, then your card would come up in a search along with however many other cards used those same two keywords which could be hundreds.  the more keywords you use and the more specific, the more likely you will match properly with a prospective buyer and it doesn't matter if it's the first keyword of your keywords or the umpteenth.  
As for meta tags and being picked up by spyders on searches outside of GCU, that is something that happens over time.  Long periods of time if you don't do any outsde promoting of your business.  The more you do promote and the more people click  on your links, the higher those will move up and rank in a google or Bing search.  That's where using facebook and other sites has it's merit.  When people click on your link that click is picked up and registered in the data banks of the search tools.  The more it is clicked on and activity is seen, the further up the ranking bar it goes.  You can increase searches for your store by having friends and family click on your store and leave commnets regularly until you have a legitimate following of non related people to your store.
I'm no expert, but basically that was the way it was explained to me.

Quote from Card_Review_Team on Jan 23^rd, 2011, 4:53am:

 
Such great advice!  Thank you 443!

Hi, Norma,
 
I was speaking of the duplicate keywords you have here: 7 birthday,7 years old,7. "7" appears 3 times. You could replace this series of keywords with 7, birthday, years old. Granted, in this example you don't gain a lot of extra characters, but the point remains that duplicates are not needed. A search for 7 years old or 7 birthday will bring up these cards in an internal or external search engine. Keywords don't have to be treated as phrases.  
 
A good place to start for information on Google SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291
 
Please notice that one of the items listed that can help your page rank is the page title, which, in the case of GCU, is the card title.
 
I'm not taking a position on whether or not GCU needs to add more space for keywords, just giving ways in which artists can make the best use of whatever amount of space is offered.
 
Reviewer 443
 
 
Quote from Norma_133903 on Jan 23^rd, 2011, 9:42am: