3 Basic Seo Questions That I Can't Find Answers To! Options

[mark347]

Hi,

I have spent a while searching around for answers to these, and just can't find them. I'm sure other beginners in SEO will find the answers useful.

1. Does using fewer keywords in your meta tags increase the weighting and therefore 'power' of them? If I just choose 3 terms, will I get more hits from them, than choosing say 20 terms?

2. Do I set up my keywords with spaces between them or commas? If I want to add a location (eg. New York) do I write this in just once? Or does it need to be plugged on to many of my terms? Do I add phrases or just the meaningful key words of search phrases? (eg. do I add "find my ideal career" or "find ideal career"? Or just "ideal career"?)

3. How often should I update my set of keywords on any page? I'm just expecting over time for new search terms to be used, and I want to keep on top of them all, providing my webcontent suits. Do I update weekly? Monthly? Yearly? Never (and just set up a new page?)

Bonus Question!:

4. Can anyone point me towards a resource that DOES have the answers to these in? I'm just intrigued to know if there is one!




Answers to these would be really appreciated!

Thanks.

[bragadocchio]

Hi Mark,

None of the major search engines admit to using meta keywords tags to index pages, and none of those search engines provide any guidance at all to their usage.

Back when search engines did use meta keywords tags, they did provide some guidance to their usage. It's been a few years.

If you want to test to see if any of the search engines are using them, please feel free to experiment. I haven't seen any benefit to their usage.

Here's a resource.

Death Of A Meta Tag

[fisicx]

It's all pretty much covered in these topics:

Quick Start Guide to SEO

SEO Myths.

But recall that none of the main search engines take any notice of the keyword metatag so you might as well delete it from your documents.

The key to the production of any webpage is to make it natural. If you want to discuss New York then just include the words in the page as if your were wrting an article. If your have something like 'In New York you can buyt the famous New York bagels on any of New York's streets' then the sentance is un-natural and may well be treated as an attempt at keyword stuffing.

[mark347]

Wow - thanks - you've just jumped me ahead a few years!

I'm wondering what else in my life I'm behind with!?

Ok, I must have misunderstood a few things in what I've read. But I'm confident then that I still have to do my keyword research to choose the right keywords to optimise the site pages on?

And once I have my list of words, I put them in the title, near the top of the page etc etc (the common info I've seen everywhere)?

Is it worth updating these regularly to match what people are searching for? Or is it better to leave it for a long time as it is?

Cheers Mark

[bragadocchio]

Ok, I must have misunderstood a few things in what I've read. But I'm confident then that I still have to do my keyword research to choose the right keywords to optimise the site pages on?

Right. You still should do that.

And once I have my list of words, I put them in the title, near the top of the page etc etc (the common info I've seen everywhere)?

There's a tremendous amount of misinformation on the web, so it's hard to answer your question. Generally, yes, you would use keyword terms and phrases on your pages. But, to "optimize" means that you are ideally limiting optimization efforts to a single keyword term or phrase or two for a page.

Is it worth updating these regularly to match what people are searching for? Or is it better to leave it for a long time as it is?

It doesn't hurt to try to match what people are searching for, but if folks are still looking for your original keyword phrase or phrases, creating new pages may also be an option.

[JohnMu]

What's your take on Yahoo! > Search Help > Search Basics > How do I improve the ranking of my web site in the search results?:

...
Use a "keyword" meta-tag to list key words for the document. Use a distinct list of keywords that relate to the specific page on your site instead of using one broad set of keywords for every page.
...

Is Yahoo's help-page obsolete or is Yahoo the only engine left that uses the "keywords" meta-tag? If it's obsolete, it's confusing a lot of people . Anyone have a contact at Yahoo who could clarify?

John

[bragadocchio]

Even on that page, they aren't really saying that they index the keywords. Maybe they do, but I wonder how much weight they would give them.

On this page, they left out the keywords. Don't know why if they are using them:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-18.html

Pages Yahoo! Wants Included in its Index

Original and unique content of genuine value
Pages designed primarily for humans, with search engine considerations secondary
Hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable
Metadata (including title and description) that accurately describes the contents of a web page
Good web design in general

Probably worth doing some experimenting with. The internet archive listings for the page you've pointed to (and the one that I linked to) contains the same text regarding meta data - though it only goes back to 2004.

Back in 1999, the Altavista folks were telling us:

What information does AltaVista actually index off of a Web page?

Basically, we index all the HTML information on a page: All text, ALT text for images, links (hrefs and images), anchors, title, description and keyword META tags, applet and ActiveX object names, the page's URL, its host name (www.foo.com) and its domain name (com). The treatment of Usenet postings is similar but with different keywords.

We do not index HTML comments.

- http://web.archive.org/web/19990508193426/...s_webmaster.htm

They were also showing us how to use them:

The META tag: Controlling how your Web page is indexed by AltaVista

In the absence of any other information, AltaVista will index all words in your document (except for comments), and will use the first few words of the document as a short abstract.

It is however possible for you to control how your page is indexed by using the META tag to specify both additional keywords to index, and a short description. Let's suppose your page contains:


<META name="description"

content="We specialize in grooming pink poodles.">

<META name="keywords" content="pet grooming,

Palo Alto, dog">


AltaVista will then do two things:
It will index both fields as words, so a search on either poodles or dog will match.
It will return the description with the URL. In other words, instead of showing the first couple of lines of the page, a match will look like the following:
Pink Poodles Inc

We specialize in grooming pink poodles.
http://pink.poodle.org/ - size 3k - 29 Feb 96
AltaVista will index the description and keywords up to a limit of 1,024 characters.

- http://web.archive.org/web/19990422070753/...addurl_meta.htm

[mark347]

Thanks for your help here guys, I'm new to the forum so I'll spend some good time reading up!

I'm not enjoying my keyword research either. Just a bit confused. I've been using Overture's keyword tool, but I keep reading comments on the pro's and con's for Overture, Wordtracker and so on, and am left feeling whichever I use my keyword research isn't going to be all that great.

There's not a clear, simple, fool proof step by step guide for keyword research is there? I'm happy to put the time in, but as long as I feel it's being spent on the right areas!

The best (or most convincing I found) was by someone called Mike Bradbury. Unfortunately I lost the link to his site, but the steps he wrote seemed to make sense. Any comments on this?

Any better keyword guides for beginners?

Thanks for your help,

Mark

[Ron Carnell]

What's your take on Yahoo! > Search Help > Search Basics > How do I improve the ranking of my web site in the search results?:

I wrote an article in late 2004 that referenced that page and explored the way Yahoo! themselves used keywords at autos.yahoo.com. I think that's still a good way to learn whether one should use spaces or comma, the right length, uniqueness, and all the other usual questions.

At the time, I found a Yahoo! page that included the following meta-keyword tag:

CODE

<meta name="keywords" content="Cars, new cars, sports cars, hybrid cars, suv, trucks, vans, convertibles, minivans, wagons, sedands, luxury cars, makeslist" />

Presumably, "sedands" was a typo, but using it as a search term DID bring up the corresponding page in the SERPs. The typo was fixed a few months later, but I saw similar results with my own test pages.

The conclusion I reached based on that page and many others was that Yahoo!, unlike other search engines, does index the contents of a meta-keyword tag but assigns very, very, very little value to each keyword. Unless it's a unique misspelling or extremely uncommon word the page will likely remain buried.

[JohnMu]

That's very interesting, Ron. Thank you for that information.

In your opinion, or perhaps based on that test, would it make sense to use the keywords meta-tag or not (assuming the same keywords are already found on the page)? Or would the value be so minimal that it would not be worth spending the time on it?

John

Edit: Your keyword brought up an older thread on the subject: Metatags - that makes a lot of sense.

This post has been edited by softplus: Mar 1 2007, 10:58 AM

[backgammonnn123]

From what my seo has shown me. Meta keywords are still very important. He is an expert link builder and his rankings have always done wonders in google but when the keywords arent in the meta tags they slip. I guess it depends on your style of seo. So i also guess there is more than one way of doing seo legally:)

[bragadocchio]

I'm not sure that there's really any value to meta keywords in Google at all, backgammonnn123.

If your SEO is doing lots of other things right, his good rankings may be inspite of having meta keyword tags.

[Ron Carnell]

In your opinion, or perhaps based on that test, would it make sense to use the keywords meta-tag or not (assuming the same keywords are already found on the page)?

I suspect the other thread you found already answered the question, John, but just for the record: No, in my opinion any keyword that is already on-page need not be included in the keywords meta-tag. It won't hurt anything, but neither will it add to what already is there.

[fisicx]

Remember this google article: Web Authoring Stats

In the metadata page is states:

... we have two name values: keywords, which these days is mostly useless, ironically, and description, which is still somewhat useful.

[backgammonnn123]

bragadocchio you could be right. hes is a specialized seo. He does link building but studies his links on a scale i have never seen before. He doesnt do on page optimization (dont ask me why as it is much easier than link building) but he has taken any site with good onpage seo to high rankings on google, yahoo etc.
I just wish he would hire an onsite seo guy just in case a site hasnt been properly onpage optimized.

This post has been edited by backgammonnn123: Mar 2 2007, 04:36 PM

[Chadly]

Hi Mark,

In addition to the valuable resources pointed out already in this thread, I always keep an eye on SEOmoz. The "articles" section there provides a great starting place for SEO related items. Many SEOmozzers post here as well, there is definitely overlap.

Here's my very general advice (I was in your exact position one year ago), and it's been stated in this thread already. Build a useful site for humans. Really focus 95% your energy in that direction. Follow all of the basic SEO techniques in doing so - semantically correct markup, separating content and presentation, unique title tags, seo friendly urls, etc, but focus on the humans first.

There is so much info (good, bad & utterly horrific) out there concerning SEO that you can just drown trying to process it all. But every one of those articles worth its weight either begins or ends with the fact that the site has to be useful to the people visiting the site. Links, search engine indexing will follow, and you can always revisit these topics once the site is up and rolling.

That's my take! Good luck!

[infonote]

Meta Keywords are not used. The meta description tag is the only tag that is used by search engines to display in search engine results.

As an answer to your question, I would ask, what does the user want? True search engines are important, but as Marketing manager of our site, we need to meet the demand of users.

[mark347]

Thanks guys for this - really useful. And the idea of aiming it to help humans as a priority makes a lot of sense. That's who Google are trying to deliver to! Also suits me just fine, as that's what I really want to do anyway - provide my site visitors with useful information.

On that note, I have another question that perhaps someone can help me with? I wrote a page to sell a workshop that I run on 'learning how to learn fast - using accelerated learning'. I wrote it with the human visitor in mind. But when I finished, I realised that the word 'learning' is in there quite a lot!

Knowing what I now know - will Google penalise me for this? I fear that it looks as if I've tried to stick the word 'learn' or 'learning' in a bit too much. As I say, I was just being natural, but I don't want it to think I'm taking a spammy approach!

If anyone is happy to look at the page and comment, I'd find that really useful: http://www.epi-learning.com/epi-workshop-primer.htm

Thanks,

Mark

[ukdaz]

Mark


Had a look - 8th paragraph seems repetitive.



Maybe think about other words that have an association or relationship with "learning" and use in its place. Would help to be less repetitive.

"(Self)-development" and "studying" immediately come to my mind... but from your website it appears you have been in the learning and training industry a long time so you will more likely come up with better words to use than mine.

Daz

[Jexley]

Because I always optimise a page per keyterm (or at most 2), then I simply take that keyterm, and some of it's accompanying friends (maybe 10 or so) and stick them in the META Keywords.

If it doesn't cost me a thing to do and it doesn't hurt anything I figure why not do it?

Good Luck.