Entries from May 2008 ↓
May 23rd, 2008 — Grass Roots SEO
What are Meta Tags?
Meta tags are in the <head> section of every website and includes information that doesn’t appear on the webpage itself. The tags are informational for the search engines, your browswer or to give authoring type of data. There are many different metatags including tags that direct the search engines to either spider a page or not, tags that tell the search engines the natural language of the site and meta tags that will tell your browser to redirect to a different page. There are two pieces of meta data designed for the search engines that are, or have been, used for search engine optimization:
The Meta Description Tag: This tag is very important for SEO. It is often used as the description on the SERP.
The Meta Keywords Tag: This is the topic of this post and is highly insignificant in the search engine algorithms.
What is the Keyword Meta Tag?
The Keyword Meta Tag, or the keyword tag as it is sometimes referred, is a piece of Meta Data used by website owners to tell the search engines what a web page is about. The tag was originally designed to list keywords that are relevant to the site rather than describing the site in a paragraph format. Here is the format of the Keyword Meta Tag:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, keyword4″>
The comma between keywords is sometimes omitted.
Some History of the Keyword Meta Tag
In about 1995, when the search engines started to appear, the Keyword Meta Tag was THE tag used to rank web pages. AltaVista and InfoSeek, the top engines of the time ranked webpages within their SERP entirely by the information provided by website owners within the Keyword Tag. This form of algorithm worked well until spammers, specifically adult sites, realized that they could put all of their important phrases into this tag many, many times and they would ourrank the competition. They also soon discovered that they could also stuff other non-relevant phrases into the keyword tag. They were able to get their site in front of people that weren’t searching for them. I still remember quite clearly searching on AltaVista for almost anything and the first few pages of results were unrelated porn sites. It didn’t matter what you searched for from ‘flowers’ to ‘automobiles’, adult sites always appeared in the results.
In about 1998, led by the new kid on the block, Google, most of the engines stopped using the Keyword Meta Tag due to this SPAM and the search engine battle started. The engines realized that the keyword tag was the main reason that their results were not relevant. They began to use the actual content of the sites as the driving force in their SERP.
The Keyword Tag With Today’s Search Engines
Most search engines ignore the Keyword Meta Tag. Many site owners don’t realize this and one of the top mistakes of new website owners that are trying to optimize their own sites is the overuse of this tag. They believe that if they just put all of their keywords into this tag, they’ll be found.
It is believed that there are a few smaller meta-crawlers that do support the keyword tag. If they do support it, they don’t put much weight on it, rather, it is used in conjunction with the content on your web page. It would be used to reinforce the information on your page. If you are going to include the Keyword Meta Tag, it is good practice not to include phrases that are not within the content of the web page. If the phrase isn’t on the page, it won’t help you get ranked by putting it in the keyword tag.
I think that there may some exceptions. If there are some common synonyms of your top phrases or mispellings of things such as your company name, it may… and I say may in a big way… such as maybe, possibly, a slim chance… that it may be a benefit to include those words.
Many top ranked webpages don’t even use the Keyword Meta Tag. Many SEO specialists believe that it is a waste of time to create and implement the tag believing that the time spent could be used in a more productive way.
May 21st, 2008 — Grass Roots SEO, Search Engines
There are many website owners that try to optimize their own websites to help increase traffic. They realize the importance of SEO and rather than look to the professionals opt for the do-it-yourself method. This can work, however, many of these site owners, as well as some professionals in the SEO arena, make mistakes. Here are the top SEO mistakes that I have seen.
- Lack of Content: No matter what else you do to your website, if you don’t have quality and unique content, you most likely will not rank well. Before any SEO efforts are put forth on your site, make sure that you are providing useful information and not just pages of links and advertisements. Just as in the real estate market where location, location, location is the mantra, in SEO, it is content, content, content.
- Inaccurate and No Keyword Research: Many web owners jump right in and start optimizing their pages without having any idea as to what their potential clients are looking for. Many sites target phrases that get very little traffic or no traffic at all.
- Title Tag: Besides good content, the Title Tag is the most important section of your website in the eyes of the search engines and weighs heavily in their algorithms. Many owners miss this opportunity and only include either the page name, such as ‘products’ or their company name in the Title Tag.
- The Keyword Meta Tag: Many novice website owners believe that as long as they put all of their keywords into the Keyword Meta Tag they will rank well. Many of the engines no longer even look at this tag no matter how many phrases are stuffed into it.
- Non-Spiderable Navigation: Although they look pretty, JavaScript menus and JavaScript drop down menus do not typically get crawled by the search engine spiders. This means that if you don’t have any other links on your site pointing to those pages, the search engines won’t find them. If the search engines can’t find them they obviously can’t rank well.
- Image Navigation: Although the search engines can spider images of text that are hyperlinked, they can not read the text. The stie will not be benefit from having keywords within their text links which is an area with weight in the engine’s algorithms.
- Flash Only Website: Search engines can not read information within flash. If your site is strictly Flash, regardless of the quality content, you won’t rank well. If you insist on having a strictly flash site, make sure that you have an html equivalent alternative.
- Backlink Spam: The novice SEO will read that links pointing back to their sites are important so immediately start submitting their site everywhere including many sites that may be banned or black listed at Google. A link building strategy should be carefully put together.
May 15th, 2008 — Google, Grass Roots SEO, Search Engines
Google is continuing its effort to bring relevant webpages to the Google searching community. Recently, they announced that its spiders will now be entering data into a small number of HTML forms that it comes accross while crawling the web. By doing this, they hope to find additional pages and URLs that are not currently available through normal text links and are part of the hidden web.
The Google spiders will only be querying forms that use the GET methond and will not be following those that use the POST method or have a password text box. They will not be entering into forms that seem to require personal information such as logon or user ids. Google says that the spider will enter a small number of queries into forms that it encounters while crawling among high-quality websites. They also state that only a small number of very useful sites will have their forms crawled and that their Googlebot will continue to adhere to nofollow and noindex tags as well as the robot.txt documents.
This new crawl should have very little, if any, impact on typical websites, however, will lead to an increase in quality search engine results.
Jayant Madhavan and Alon Halevy from Google’s Crawling and Indexing Team state on the Google Webmaster Central Blog:
“This experiment is part of Google’s broader effort to increase its coverage of the web. In fact, HTML forms have long been thought to be the gateway to large volumes of data beyond the normal scope of search engines. The terms Deep Web, Hidden Web, or Invisible Web have been used collectively to refer to such content that has so far been invisible to search engine users. By crawling using HTML forms (and abiding by robots.txt), we are able to lead search engine users to documents that would otherwise not be easily found in search engines, and provide webmasters and users alike with a better and more comprehensive search experience. “
May 13th, 2008 — Google, Search Engines
Google labs continues to come out with new ways of searching the web. One of their most recent technologies is the ability to find what you are looking for when you’re away from the house and on the go. Simply text message your search query to Google by texting your query to 466453 (it spells GOOGLE on most phones that have the letters onthe dial pad)
I did some testing with this feature and found that although some results were quite accurate, others were quite off base and Google should keep working at refining results. I was, however, very impressed with the speed in which Google responded as I received a text from them with search results in less than 10 seconds each time.
Search Results on Google SMS:
You will not get the typical Google search page results when using Google SMS. Unlike the online Google results where you receive a long list of links to other websites, SMS results are strictly informational. You will receive actual information rather than links to pages that wil contain your information. For example, if you query ‘the Midtown Hotel in Boston’, you will receive the address and phone number of that particular hotel rather than receiving a list of websites that talk about the hotel. If you query ‘weather Boston’, you receive actual weather information rather than a list of weather websites.
What devices & what services do I need on my cell phone to use Google SMS?
Google’s Mobile Help Center states that their mobile search is available only in the United States, Canada, China, Japan and India and will work on all of the major US mobile providers including Alltel, AT&T, Centennial, Dobson, Nextel, Sprint PCS, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Verizon, and Virgin Mobile. The service is currently only available in English. Google does’t charge for this search capability, however, you should verify with your service provider as to the fees and costs associated with texting and make sure your text messaging sevice is enabled.
What about the search queries?
You can actully search for anything, as you would on Google, however, be very specific or you won’t get relevant results, or any search results at all in some cases. An example of a search that you text Google SMS could be the phrase ‘marathon’ which you get no results for. Rather than receiving a text message back about marathons, the message simply asks for you to be more specific by adding a location. If you text ‘Boston marathon’ you will receive local information about companies in Boston that have the phrase ‘marathon’ in it. If you text ‘define boston marathon’, you get a brief description of the race.
Google’s SMS help page offers some ways to bet more specific with your searches. Here are some that I found interesting and may be helpful when on the Go.
Weather: Add a zip code or city and state along with the phrase ‘weather’ in your Google SMS search query. Tests I ran showed the current weather as well as a very short description of the following three day forcast.
Local: Enter the type of business you are looking for along with either a zip code or town and state, such as ‘chinese restaurant 01803′ or ‘hotel in boston’ and you will typically receive 1-3 local business listings showing the business name, address and phone number. These results are drawn from the online Google Local listings. If you want your business found in these results, make sure you have registered at Google Local.
Sports: Enter ’score’ along with the name of a sports team from the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL or NCAA and you will get the current scores. I did some testing here as well and found that they did display most scores, however, some showed that the game was not yet complete even though it had been over for hours.
Flight Information: Enter the name of the airline, the flight number and the phrase ‘flight’ and you’ll know if the person you are picking up at the airport will be on time.
Other Google queries found on their help page includes stock information, movies, area codes, currency conversion, directions and more.
What will they think of next?
May 8th, 2008 — Grass Roots SEO, Search Engines
There is has been a war raging ever since the first search engine appeared online and the first webmaster realized he could manipulate his page to rank well on that search engine. Most of the general public doesn’t even realize this war exsists or has existed for some time. They continue their daily lives, using search engines to find what they need, oblivious that they are part of this search engines war. They are part of the cause because they have a credit card in their pocket and they search for what they need on Google.
This war does not shed any blood although there have been casualties in the way of web sites that have fallen by the wayside. There are websites that have been shot down by the search engines and are now lying forgotten.
The war is between the SEO - search engine optimization specialist and the search engines and if you are a website owner, an SEO or someone that just searches on Google or Yahoo, you are part of this war. If you have ever made a modification to a website with the hope of getting found first or getting better rankings on the search engines then you are part of the war.
This war began when website owners realized that if they stuffed a huge amount of keywords in the keyword meta tag, their site could show up at the top of the search engines. I still remember clearly in the early years of search engines how the first few pages of every search query would show porn, the biggest spammers. The engines fought back and came up with different algorithms for rankings trying to make their results more accurate and user friendly.
So the SEO changed and came up with different ways of getting found higher in the search results. They came up with new techniques which in turn made the engines battle back, once again changing their algorithms. And the cycle and the battles raged on.
Yes, there is a war, however, I think that this search engine war has been a good war.
Those days of irrelevant search results are gone. The search engines have gotten better at what they do and the role of the SEO has evolved. You can no longer stuff your keywords and websites have to be carefully analyzed and created with relevant and unique content based on specific keyword research. The Internet surfer, the search engines and the quality website owners all benefit.
By working against each other, the SEO and the search engines have made a better Internet. Let the search engine war rage on.
May 2nd, 2008 — Useful SEO Tools
A while ago I put up a post concerning a nice online tool that you can use to check your page rank on Google. Recently, however, the tool has not been working as well as in the past. I’m not sure if this is due to increased traffic, a change at Google or just a malfunction. Either way, I set off to find other tools that I could use to check Page Rank on Google.
If you are in need of a way to check your Google Page Rank you might want to try www.prchecker.info. The tool is very easy to use and gives very fast and accurate results. They also allow you to download some code that you can put directly on your website that shows page rank.
One glitch that I have found with this PR checker is that if you hit your enter key, rather than click on the ‘CheckPR’ button, you will get an error.
Check your page rank here….
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