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High Rankings Advisor: Meta Keyword Tag - Issue No. 009May 8, 2002 ________________________________________________________
~~~IN TODAY'S ADVISOR~~~ *Introductory Comments: ----> Pesky Meta Tags and New Features *Search Engine Marketing: ----> The Meta Keyword Tag *This Week's Sponsor: ----> AltaVista's Web Marketing Services *Other SEO News: ----> Yahoo! Search Once Again Ranked as No. 1 ----> InfoSpace's New Meta-Search ----> Google's Disapproval *Stuff You Might Like ----> Step-By-Step(tm) Copywriting Course *Advisor Wrap-Up: ----> Real Life Seminar, Anyone? ________________________________________________________ ~~~Introductory Comments~~~ Welcome to another issue of the Advisor! I've received five or six emails this week asking about that pesky little Meta Keyword tag. I'm amazed that the myth of this tag is still alive and well and living in many people's brains (and apparently their sites too!). So, I've dusted off my old Meta Keyword Article, spiffed it up a bit and am republishing it here for you to learn once and for all what this tag is all about. Also, this week I've added a new section called "Stuff You Might Like." This may or may not become a weekly feature; but either way, be sure you check it out today because I'm not kidding about this being stuff you might like! Also, if you've got stuff that others might like, send it on over to me with "Stuff You Might Like" in the subject line, and I'll check it out when I have time. Who knows, maybe your stuff will show up in a future issue! (Please don't send me garbage though. If I get a lot of that, I may have to make another new section called "Stuff You Won't Like," and I'm sure you wouldn't want it to be featured there!) On to the good stuff! - Jill ~~~Search Engine Marketing Issues~~~ +++The Meta Keyword Tag+++ Can the Meta Keyword Tag Bring High Rankings to my Site? Everyone knows that to obtain high search engine rankings all you have to do is put the keywords that you want to rank high with into your Meta Tags, right? Not even close! If it were that simple, I'd certainly be out of work. How many of you reading this have obsessed over your Meta Tags in the hope that it would bring you high rankings? How many of you have tried putting every relevant keyword you could think of into this Meta Tag only to have your site continue to be nearly invisible to the search engines? How many of you couldn't decide if you should put commas between the keywords? Spaces? No commas? ALL CAPS? Plurals? Have you wondered if you should use the same Meta Tags on every page? I do believe that I see a whole lot of hands going up out there! (Yes, I'm psychic!) Don't worry; I'll get to all that in a moment. First, I want to show you the HTML code of this tag, in case you're not familiar with it. The Meta Keyword Tag is usually placed beneath the Title and Meta Description Tags in the HEAD section of your pages' HTML code, as follows: (Please note that I added a dot [.] in the code so you can view it in all email programs. You'll need to remove the dot if you copy this code for your site.) <.HEAD> <.TITLE>Your Descriptive Keywords Title Goes Here<./TITLE> <.META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Your keyword-rich marketing description goes here."> <.META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="your keyword phrases,go here,separated by a comma,but not a space"> <./HEAD> If the Keyword Meta Tag were a child, it would be put into a foster home due to all the abuse it has received over the years! Once upon a time, in the prehistoric days of the Internet (1995?), Meta Keyword Tags were a great little tool for the search engines to help them determine how to rank sites in their search results. However, as always happens with anything this simple, the tag began to get abused. People (spammers) put keywords into the Meta Tag that had nothing to do with the content of their site. Because they knew lots of people were searching for things like "sex" for instance, they'd put that word in their Meta Tags a number of times in hopes of bringing in visitors, even though their site had nothing to do with sex! Personally, I don't quite understand that logic, because if it worked (it didn't), it would bring in highly untargeted visitors. Remember, all traffic is not created equal. The goal of any search engine optimization campaign is to bring in highly targeted traffic from those seeking exactly what you've got! Over time, less and less weight was given to this poor abused Meta Tag, and more and more weight was given to the visible content of the pages. (For the record, content was always given more weight than Meta Tags.) Today the Meta Keyword Tag is quietly living in its foster home and is fairly irrelevant to getting found in the search engines. If you were pressed for time and had to give up one Meta Tag, this would be the one to give up. To be sure, some engines still do index the words within this tag (most notably, Inktomi and AltaVista), but they use it as a very minor supplement to the words in the body copy and the Title Tag of your page. Should I Bother with Meta Keyword Tags? Since the search engines use a wide variety of factors to determine site rankings, optimizing pages to rank high is a cumulative effort. Therefore, you should certainly use every legitimate optimization technique available, including the Meta Keyword Tag. At best, it may help boost your site a bit in those engines that still read them. At worst, it won't hurt your rankings (unless you brazenly stuff them full of keywords). If you are going to use them, make sure you use a different Meta Keyword Tag for each unique page of your site. The content on each page is different; therefore your Meta Tags should also be different. What Should I Put in This Meta Tag? First let's recap what needs to be done *before* you ever attempt to create your Meta Keyword Tag: 1. Keyword research through WordTracker <http://our.affiliatetracking.net/wordtracker/af.cgi?28> to find keyword phrases that people are actually searching for. (That's my affiliate link to WordTracker.) 2. Choose two or three relevant keyword phrases to focus on for each page of your site. 3. Write or rewrite the site's copy based on your chosen keyword phrases. 4. Create a unique Title Tag for each page using the same keyword phrases your copy was based on. 5. Create a unique Meta Description Tag for each page as a marketing sentence, also based on your chosen keyword phrases for that particular page. When everything is in place, creating your Meta Keyword Tags is now a snap! (If you skip any of the steps above, your Meta Keyword Tags will be fairly useless, so don't cheat!) I usually start this tag out by first entering the keyword phrases I used in my Title Tag. Then I comb through each paragraph of visible copy on the page, note any important "bonus phrases" and copy & paste them into the Meta Keyword Tag field. Since you shouldn't generally have misspellings in your visible copy, you can add them to this Meta Tag. I happen to separate the individual phrases with a comma and no space, but that's just my preference. Using no commas at all in this tag is basically the same thing, and perfectly acceptable since most engines appear to treat commas as a space. (If you get nothing else out of this article, please understand that you shouldn't obsess over the age-old comma or no comma debate!) What About Keyword Repetition? Another common abuse of Meta Keyword Tags was -- and still is -- the repetition of words. Spammers found that if they repeated keywords enough times, the search engines would "think" they were relevant to the page and perhaps give it a high ranking for those words. Because of this abuse, too much repetition can now hurt you rather than help you. A good rule of thumb is never to insert the same word twice in a row in this tag, even if you're using different variations, and even if a comma separates them. (Variations include plurals, ALL CAPS, different tenses, etc.) That's all there is to it. If everyone treated this Meta Tag with the respect it deserves, and put only relevant keywords into it, perhaps we could get it out of its foster home and back to its rightful place in the family of Meta Tags! _________________________________________adv. GET INTO THE ALTAVISTA INDEX QUICKLY AND EASILY _________________________________________ AltaVista proudly announces the best way to manage your site! AV's Web Marketing Services programs ensure opportunities for fast URL inclusion, highly qualified traffic, guaranteed freshness & detailed reporting - all designed to set your Web site apart from the pack. Add enhancements to drive traffic to your most important pages today! See: <http://ilib.com/!sd0304/www.altavista.com/addurl> _________________________________________ ~~~Other SEO News~~~ ++Yahoo! Search Once Again Ranked as No. 1++ Apparently I rate as "press" these days...how cool. I just received a press release from our old friends at Yahoo! stating that Yahoo! Search once again ranked as the No. 1 Internet search destination in the U.S., according to the Nielsen/NetRatings' MarketView report issued in April 2002. I guess not everyone has heard of Google yet. Give it time, Yahoo! old girl, give it time... ++InfoSpace Launches a New Meta-Search Product at Excite++ In other news, InfoSpace (which now owns Excite) just launched some sort of new meta-search product. But since I read somewhere it has something to do with those LookSmart rascals, I don't really give a hoot. (Feel free to substitute your own nasty word for hoot!) However, if you give a hoot, you can learn more about what they're up to here: <http://www.businesswire.com/insp/index-ep.shtml>. ++Google's Disapproval - I'm so Ashamed++ Every time I get a great ad going in Google AdWords, one that gets tons of clickthroughs at a decent (low) clickthrough price, the Google Gods come along and disapprove my ad. What's up with that? I understand they have editorial guidelines, especially now that they're being shown over at AOL, but puhleeze, Google...don't tell me that you're disapproving my ad because it won't bring me targeted customers. I ain't that stoopid, ya know! ~~~Stuff You Might Like~~~ ++Step-By-Step(tm) Copywriting Course++ Well, guys...I think we've hit the jackpot! I've stumbled onto something that I *know* many of you are gonna find useful. Since so much of search engine optimization is in the writing, it's no surprise that many of you reading this are copywriters and copywriter wannabes. For you, I've got a special treat! I've spent the past couple of weeks reading Karon Thackston's brand-new copywriting course, and boy-oh-boy is it a winner! Karon spent five long months putting down on virtual paper everything that she's learned in her 17 years as a veteran copywriter. In fact, she told me that the hardest part was consciously making note of what comes naturally to her when she writes. I understand that perfectly, as that's the same thing I do when writing or speaking about search engine optimization. But, man, when you can get that natural process stuff down on paper, it really makes for killer material, and a great learning experience! The major focus of the course is online copywriting, since Karon's been into that since 1995. However, all types of copywriting are discussed, including search engine optimization copywriting. The course itself is actually a jam-packed, 105-page .pdf file, which could be read as a book if you wanted to be lazy and just learn the basics. (I admit, that's how I read it, but that's because I hire people who already know this stuff to do my copywriting!) However, if you're serious about learning how to write great copy, you should take the course in the manner in which it was intended. That is, read all the lessons and really try to complete the assignments. You've gotta use your own willpower for that one though, since no teacher will be standing over your shoulder waiting for you to hand it in! What I like best about this course/book are the real world examples Karon uses. She doesn't just *tell* you how to write great copy; she explains why certain techniques work and why others don't, and provides stunning examples to back it all up. In fact, her writing samples were so good that I'm seriously thinking about signing up for some of the services she wrote about (a personal coach was one that sticks out in my mind -- if only I wasn't such a procrastinator!). And that, my friends, is the crux of what Karon will teach you, if you decide to give the course a spin: how you too can write copy in a way that truly entices people to take action. Wish I could tell you that you could download the course for free, but writers gotta eat too ya know! The good news is that it's priced extremely low at only $59.77. A whole heck of a lot cheaper than if you signed up for a copywriting course at a University or Business School, and most likely, a whole heck of a lot better! Anyway, here's the link for more info and/or to purchase the entire course: </copywritingcourse>. And yes, this happens to be an affiliate link, and yes, I'd be recommending it whether or not I signed up to be an affiliate. I promise you that I would never, ever recommend something that I didn't personally believe was first-rate. You have my word on that! These affiliate link thingees simply help me cover the cost for my subscriber list host, proofreading, web hosting, etc. Oh, and I forgot to tell you. I just noticed that Karon has a money-back guarantee - so there you go...you've got nothing to lose! (There's also a whole bunch of bonus stuff that comes with the course, which I didn't have time to check out.) ~~~Advisor Wrap-Up~~~ You know, I really love writing the wrap-up. When I start the newsletter on Wednesday mornings, I rarely have a clue as to what I'll be talking about. Well, okay, I do often have some idea about one or two of the sections, but it's all in my head. Once I get to this last section, everything has fallen into place, and I'm always amazed at how it comes out. It's pretty cool to take a blank email template and spill my guts on it until it turns into something useful and helpful to you guys. (Interesting image, no?) If I can make you laugh a little along the way, it's even better. I've gotta admit that I often crack myself up while writing this too, which is probably the only reason I keep at it each week. Your wonderful feedback helps too. Keep it coming! Before I sign off, I have a quick question for you. Who here would be interested in a search engine optimization seminar in the New England area? Anyone? I'm thinking beginner to intermediate sessions for a half day, or possibly a full day if I bring in one or two other "teachers." Whatcha think? Let me know... Jill    |
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