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Advanced Meta Tag Topics
Let's get into a more in depth discussion of Meta Tags,
as there is still a lot of misunderstanding of how they
work and what they actually do. There is still a big
misconception among many that the key to search engine
positioning is is stuffing as many keywords into your meta tag as
is possible. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Here's fact that you can take to the bank. You can achieve a page
1 #1 ranking in almost ANY major search engine WITHOUT using ANY
meta tags whatsoever. It has been done, and is done on a daily
basis.
Now that's not to say you can't make good use of the meta tags if
you know how best to use them.
For the purpose of this discussion, I'm only going to focus on
the meta keyword and description tag as they are the only 2 tags
worth mentioning. The use of any other tags is largely a waste of
time
Let's first look at how the specific engines treat Meta tags.
Alta Vista: AV indexes both the meta keyword and description tag,
There is no special preference given to words in either tag. They
are treated no differently than any other text on the page other
than the fact it comes early in the document which can be
important. AV uses your meta description tag for the description
that is returned to searchers. Neither tag is mandatory to
achieve a high ranking since they are treated like any other
text.
Lycos: Lycos DOES NOT use or index any meta tag information.
Lycos simply ignores your meta tags.
Google: Much like Lycos, Google DOES NOT use or index any meta
tag information. Google simply ignores your meta tags
Excite: Excite uses the meta description tag to rerun the
description for searches, but it DOES NOT index the tag, so it is
of no use in positioning. The meta keyword tag is ignored.
Infoseek: Infoseek does index the meta keyword and description
tags. The use of the meta keyword tag can actually do you more
harm than good in Infoseek especially if you repeat a keyword
more than 3x in the keyword tag. My recommendation: Only use a
keyword once in the meta keyword tag for Infoseek and even better
yet, don't use the meta keyword tag. DO USE the meta description
tag and get your primary keyword in the description early, but
only once.
Inktomi: Inktomi supplies results for several engines including
Hotbot and MSN search. For Hotbot: Meta keywords can affect your
positioning on HotBot. You should use them,
however, there is no evidence that repeating them will improve
your page's position. Since Hotbot is case sensitive, it is
acceptable to use upper and lower case variations, such as cars,
Cars and CARS, Most importantly, make sure that you include all
of your important relevant keywords in your meta keywords
description just once.
MSN search makes no use of either the meta keyword or description
tag.
So as you can see, and I'm sure some of you are a little
surprised, the use of Meta keyword tag is not all that important
except in Hotbot. The meta description tag is more important in
that it is used by several search engines for your summary.
Strategy: I do recommend you use both the keyword and description
tag if you are optimizing one page for all search engines as
those engines that don't use the tags will just ignore them.
Now, let's talk about some concepts.
Alta Vista recommends the use of synonyms in your meta tag.
Let's say your main keyword is 'cars" and that is what is in your
TITLE tag. Fort alta vista their recommended approach would be to
create your meta tags so they look something like this
<Meta name="keywords" content="automobiles, autos, ford,
chevrolet, chrysler"> etc.. You see, I am using words that are
all very related to the main term cars, without using the term
cars in the keyword tag itself. This helps develop the all
important theme that is so important in Alta Vista today. quite
simply, if your page topic is all over the place, you won't rank
in Alta Vista.
Let's look at ways to use meta tags for other search engines.
Here's an actual meta tag from a page I recently did for a
client.
<META NAME="keywords" content="public records, search, usa,
research, canada, united states, washington, oregon, california,
montana, idaho, utah, nevada, arizona, public records, wyoming,
colorado, new mexico, north dakota, south dakota, nebraska,
kasnsas, records, oklahoma, texas, minnesota, iowa, missouri,
arkansas, louisiana, mississippi, tennessee, kentucky, illinois,
wisconsin, florida, georgia, south carolina, north carolina,
virginia, west virginia, maryland, indiana, michigan, ohio,
pennsylvania, delaware, new york, new jersey, connecticut, rhode
island, massachusets, new york, vermont, new hampshire, maine,">
If the main term for the site is public records, adding single
words that may be added to the primary search phrase near the
beginning of the page allows the search engines to return results
for more than your primary phrase. You wouldn't want to place
text like that which is in the meta tag above on your page, it
would be meaningless and just a bunch of words, but by placing
words in the meta tag that have a direct search relationship to
your primary phrase, greatly increases the chances of returning a
match. If someone were to search for public records arizona,
public records being the main phrase, an engine that uses meta
keyword tags will see arizona near the top of the page and index
it accordingly. This is how you optimize a page for more than 1
keyword. You don't want to use the phrase public records within
every possible combination, this would just be spamming and throw
your keyword density so far off that you would have no chance of
getting any kind of decent ranking.
This is just part of optimizing web page, but very misunderstood
part. Keep in mind like I said in the beginning, for the most
part, search engines that index the meta tags treat them no
differently than any other text on your page.
PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ENGINES:
Let's start with a discussion of pay per click ranking search
engines and currently the king of these is goto.com
The biggest difference that separates goto from other search
engines is that you can bid on certain search words or phrases.
You only pay based on how many times your link is clicked when
someone searches for a particular word on which you have made a
bid. This is the ultimate in targeted advertising. You are
setting the price you are willing to pay to get a customer to
your website. Chances are, anyone who clicks on your link has an
interest in what your site is offering.
Another great feature of goto is the ability to see how often a
certain word or phrase is searched in a given month. This is a
great way to help identify keywords that are important to your
site. Often you will see keywords listed that you never would
have thought of using. You can find how often words are searched
by going to
http://inventory.go2.com/inventory/Search_Suggestion.jhtml
Here's how it works:
Type in the phrase 'business opportunity' without the
quotes. You'll see that, that phrase was searched 5335 times in
May 2000. If you had the top ranking for that word that's a
lot of traffic from one search engine. Now, click the goto.com
logo at the top of that page and enter 'business opportunity'
without the quotes as your search term. You will see that the top
entry for this search term has bid $3.86 What this means is that
every time someone clicks on his link from that search, it costs
the owner of that link $3.86. Now let me tell you, that is a LOT
of money per click. It is also a very popular search term.
Unless you have a very high priced item that really sells, you
will likely lose a lot of money by paying $3.86 for one click.
There a trick to getting cost effective advertising at goto.
Here's the secret. Go to the the page I listed above that lets
you see how many times a keyword or phrases were searched. Type
in your keyword. You will get a list showing that term and
possibly a few hundred related search terms. Print this page and
keep it. Repeat this process for all your important keywords.
You'll immediately notice that the top keywords have a lot of
searches per month and the total numbers drop off quickly from
the thousands to the hundreds and all the way down to words that
may only get 8 or 9 searches per month.
Now here's the part you need to understand to get low cost
targeted traffic to your website using goto. Don't start at the
top of the list. Start at the end. Place a check by every
possible keyword that applies to your site starting with those
that are searched 5 or 6 times per month and working your way
back up the list. In most cases you won't even consider bidding
on the top search terms as they will cost you a fortune. They key
is that you can find hundreds if not thousands of individual
search terms that while individually may only be searched 5-10
times per month, but if you multiply that by 200 search terms you
are seeing total searches that equal between 1000-2000 per month.
Now here's why this works. Quite often you can get a #1 or at the
very least, a page 1 top 5 ranking for almost ALL these keywords
for $0.01 to 0.03 per click. Let's put it another way. If you
want to buy 2000 clicks in a month at goto using the word
business opportunity, for a top ranking those 2000 clicks would
currently cost you $7720. Does this sound cost effective? You can
get those same 2000 clicks using multiple words that are related
to 'business opportunity' for a lot less. Let's say you were
paying $0.03 per click for 200 keywords, each of which gets 10
searches a month. 0.03 per click will still get you the top
ranking for many of these keywords. The end result, those same
2000 clicks to your site have cost you $60. You decide. You can
spend over $7720 or accomplish the exact same result for $60.
This is the key to using pay per click search engines.
Some other lesser known pay per click search engines that are
gaining popularity are Rocketlinks; http:www.rocketlinks.com
and 7search; http://www.7search.com
ROCKETLINKS:
Neither Rocketlinks or 7search receives anywhere near the amount
of traffic that goto receives. Despite this, there are ways to
get good targeted traffic from both of these search engines.
Let's take a look at the Rocketlinks website. Point your browser
to http://www.rocketlinks.com At the very top of the page you
will see a category called 'Hot Picks' There are 3 listings.
These are the highest 3 bidders for the term 'todayshot' Now
while getting a front page listing at Rocketlinks is considerably
less expensive than goto, prices to get on the front page still
range between $0.80 to slightly over $1.00. As with goto, unless
you have a very high priced item that sells, this is way too much
to pay for 1 click.
Here's the trick. If you click the 'Hot Picks' logo you will be
taken to the search page for that specific term. Anyone
who wants to get their site listed on the main page goes to this
page to check the bids. What you need to do is still bid on the
search term 'hotpicks' but looking at the price list you can
still get your site listed on page 1 for often less than $0.10.
You won't get as many clicks as you would if you were on
Rocketlinks front page but you can get some good targeted traffic
and clicks.
This same rule applies to all the other categories on Rocketlinks
front page.
Because Rocketlinks receives far less traffic than does goto,
bidding on normal search terms does not yet generate a lot of
traffic. The secret comes from the front page and the associated
categories listed there.
7SEARCH
These same concepts apply to 7search as well. They have several
categories on their front page. The key to getting targeted
traffic with 7 search is the same as with Rocketlinks. Bid on
front page categories. Currently there are some great bargains to
be had at 7search.
I fully expect this model of paying per click to increase in the
near future as it has proven to be highly successful and
profitable to both the search engines using this search model as
well as the customers bidding on terms. Every click is 100%
targeted. And this is the goal of every advertising campaign.
Let's discuss a few simple things that can greatly enhance your
site's ability to get a top ranking in the major search engines.
Optimizing Your Page For The Search engines
First, your page's title. <TITLE> Don't use your company name,
unless you are CNN or Pepsi or some other company with massive
name recognition, no one is going to be searching for you using
your company name. You need to incorporate as many of your
important keywords into the title as you can. The title is what
appears at the very top of the browser. You know, the colored
strip across the very top of the screen. That is where your title
tag is visible. In most cases, the title tag is what the search
engine looks for first.
It is not important that your title convey any special meaning to
the person visiting your site. Your title should be written with
the search engines in mind. It is important to place your
keywords into this tag. If you are selling a money making
opportunity, you would want your title to use terms like.. earn
money, fast cash, cash flow, home worker, online income. I think
you get the idea. But I don't advocate using the word money as a
keyword for reasons I will discuss later. Use words that describe
your site. Words or phrases that real people would actually use
to try and find you. The length of the title tag can vary. If you
have several important keywords and they are used on your page,
it is OK to use a lot of them in your title, but a good guideline
is to try and keep your title tag to somewhere between 7 to 15
words. And a word of warning. Don't even think about putting
money, money, money etc as your title tag. The search engines are
getting smarter and they will classify this as spam, and then,
Poof, your page has been dropped completely.
A special note to those using some earlier versions of Microsoft
Front Page. Front Page has a knack of placing your title tag
AFTER the meta tags. This is not acceptable. if you are using MS
Front Page you will need to manually edit this information.
OPTIMIZING THE BODY OF YOUR PAGE:
Another very important factor. The first text that should appear
in your body tag, <BODY> (this is the part of your webpage that
has the main text and images) is actual meaningful text, using
your keywords. It is important to do this even before any images
are used. You don't want to just repeat your keywords but rather
use them in a meaningful paragraph that describes your site,
something like, "Are you are looking to earn money, or create
some fast cash? Are you tired of having negative cash flow? If you
would like to become a home worker and earn great income online,
you have come to the right place." See how you have managed to
get your keywords into your title and into the first text the
search engine sees? You would also want to incorporate these
keywords into your Meta keyword tag. See how there is a direct
relation between different parts of the page. Each section is
very important. And of these 3 sections, your Meta keyword tag
will often carry the least amount of weight.
The one other thing to do is to make sure that those keywords are
again used in the body of the text somewhere else on the page.
Work these keywords into your sales letter or explanation of your
product or service further down the page. Don't over saturate
the page with keywords, just work them into a normal flow of the
text.
This is called keyword relevancy. In other words, your keywords
in the title must be relevant to the keywords on your page which
must be relevant to the keywords in your meta tags. All areas of
your page matter. This is one of the most common mistakes people
make. If all areas of your page are not optimized, your page is
not optimized.
Keyword density refers to how often your relevant keywords appear
in the text of your page. Don't think that automatically stuffing
your page with your keywords is the key to instant success. It's
not. Too much density is as bad or worse than not enough keyword
density. But getting your keywords into your text is very
important. Your keywords should be at the beginning of the body
text and also placed throughout the document.
OVERUSED WORDS:
There are certain words that are so over used that to place them
in your title or keyword tag has almost no meaning. Words like
money, or sex. Try and be more creative because the odds of
getting a top ranking for these words is almost nil. It's not
going to happen, yet I continue to see sites filled with these
keywords. It just won't work. Try and find words that uniquely
describe your type of business. You are far more likely to have
success with these types of words or phrases than the overused
terms millions of others are using to try and get into the top
10.
While these tips don't apply to one specific search engine, they
do have relevancy to all search engines. It is not possible to
optimize a single page for all search engines. It is possible to
do well in several but you are using general optimizing
techniques like described above.
DOORWAY PAGES:
Let's get into another topic that lets you optimize a page
directly for a particular search engine. I'm talking about
doorway pages. A doorway page is simply a single page optimized
for one keyword or one phrase for one search engine. You probably
have seen doorway pages before and never even realized it. if
you've come across a page that has a logo and says please enter
here or something similar, you have likely come across a doorway
page optimized to help you find the main site of this company.
Doorway pages are designed for one purpose. To help you get
better rankings for your keywords in certain search engines.
There are several ways you can create a doorway page. You can
create a page for one keyword based on the guidelines we
described above, but unless you understand how each engine works,
your efforts are not likely to succeed.
If one of your main keywords was money, multiple doorway pages
could be created for that one term for various search engines.
each page would be specifically optimized for that word for a
given search engine. each page would be different as each search
engine uses different criteria to determine their rankings.
Most of the top online marketing sites make use of doorway pages.
Often they have well over 1000 of these pages created for several
different keywords. each page is carefully designed to appeal to
what the search engines are looking for which means your page has
a much higher chance of attaining a good ranking. |
