Keyword repitition

Is there a maximum number of times you should use a keyword in the keyword meta tag? I don't mean just repeating the keyword but if it's included in a few different keyword phrases would that be ok?

I have used single keywords and the same keyord as part of two or three keyphrase with no complaints or negative fallout from the SE's.

I think [others will no doubt disagree] that providing the phrases are ones you feel searchers will use, and therefore logical 'text' for a search engine, you will be fine.

MSN and Yahoo seem to have no problems and Google doesn't take a great deal of notice of metatag keywords anyway, concentrating as they do on the title and body text for keyword assignments.

There are no hard figures limitation for META tags but having a great number of characters in META keyword tag will certainly dilute the relevancy.

Some sites rank well with tons of keywords but some high ranked sites do not even have a META keyword tag..

A good approximation is to look at the top three sites in your niche for reference

You know Google may not take many meta keywords tegs. It can consider them to be spam IMO.

2-3 repetitions maximum

Google does not use Meta tag at all but still there are few search engines that use meta tag content to determine relevancy (for example: Yahoo is bit interested in meta tags to determine relevancy)
Yes, you can repeat the keyword in the Meta tag few times but avoid the repetition and try to put the targeted keyword once at the beginning of a 5 to 8 words page title.

there is no such rule that you have to use specific number of keywords. you may use different types key phrases along with one keyword. for example you use a keyword 'shirt'.

example:

according to you the keywords and phrases should be shirt, red shirt, white shirt, long shirt, short shirt.

here you have been using the keyword shirt many times with different words. but the crawler never understand these phrases and count the shirt as 5 times. It is better to concentarte on few keywords and phrases rather than a bunch of keywords and phrases. your repetition of keywords should be 4 to 5%.

It depends on specific search engine keyword density, anyway I would suggest better to avoid highly competitive keywords and also those keywords that might attract untargeted traffic.

Yes it's ok along as the phrases are different.

You mean on one page, I think, don't you?