December 30, 2009

Are Meta Keywords hurting your Google rankings?

What about Meta Keywords? Shouldn’t we be using them to help our search engine rankings?

I have had this discussion with website owners, co-workers, and colleagues dozens of times. When I tell them I use Meta keywords to find out what keywords their competition is trying to rank for, they usually drop it. For example, here is the tag from the home page of a pizza site that ranks well on Google:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”Pizza Restaurant, Chicago Style Pizza, Deep Dish Pizza, Micro Brews, Draft Beer, Tavern, Sports Bar, Happy Hour, NTN, Free WiFi, Calzones, Pool, Billiards, Guinness, Family Dining, Kid-Friendly”>

I can get an idea of what their most important terms are. What’s interesting in this example is they have terms that will never rank (‘Guinness’, ‘Happy Hour’) on Google. Maybe they’re trying to throw the competition off? Or maybe they wasted their time – you decide.

Even without the keywords meta tag, your competition can easily infer what you are trying to rank for by analyzing the Title tag, Meta Description, Alt-Text, Body content, Header tags, inbound link anchor text, etc. But why make it easier by putting your primary keywords in a tag that is such an easy target? Can you see how this information, in the hands of your competitors, can be used to hurt your SEO rankings?

I haven’t updated Meta keywords on any of my sites or my client’s sites (unless they absolutely insist) for years and they all have great rankings. The reality is that Google doesn’t consider them at all when it comes to search results.

If the other secondary and tertiary search engines do, it is a small piece of the ranking algorithm.

The exception is when I come across a site, during an SEO audit, that has many unrelated terms in their keywords that don’t even exist in the content of the page. I may update it or simply delete it to save brain damage.

If you feel you must optimize this tag, do it with eyes wide open and make sure you have content on the page that reflects the keywords in your list.

By contrast, the Meta description is extremely important. Don’t optimize it for the search engines but do optimize it for your audience since this is the text that is often displayed on the SERP. Think of it as ad copy.

Here’s my secret for making Meta keywords work for you:

(drum roll)

Ignore them. You’ll gain hours of valuable time to develop and execute your holistic Internet marketing strategy.

The inspiration for this post came from a LinkedIn discussion where you’ll find the debate is alive and well.

Happy New Year!
Bryan Phillips
Holistic Online Marketer

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August 14, 2009

Adding Noindex, Nofollow to Home Page Nightmare

Imagine your home page ranks very high on the first page of Google for many high volume, highly competitive terms. Your search engine optimization efforts are working and life is good!

In addition, you’re testing new content with the Google Web Optimizer to see if a new version of your home page will convert better than your current page.

You decided that you didn’t want Google to index your test page (you called it index-b.html) so you added the following tag in your <HEAD> section:

<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW”>

This essentially tells the Google robot to keep index-b.html out of the index and keep your page out of the search results. No foul here.

Ok, you’re happy with the quantitative data that the Google Web Optimizer & Google Analytics has given you. Time on page is up, bounce rates are down, and most importantly, conversion rates are up on your test page (index-b.html). You’re feeling good about being proactive with testing new content and your new improved performance (pat pat) and you put the test page in as the home page.

There would have been no issue as long as your remembered to remove the ROBOTS tag before replacing your old home page.

But you didn’t… and NOW YOU ARE SCREWED! AAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Your home page has disappeared from Google’s search results! Not only does it not appear for the high volume terms - it doesn’t even display for your domain name!

This is bad. Really bad. Luckily, you identified the problem the day after Google “deindexed” your home page.

Your mind is spinning with questions, fear, & uncertainty…

  • How did we let this happen?
  • What can/should we do now?!?
  • How long until our page is “reindexed”?
  • How long until we get our top positions back?

Ok, I’ve had a direct experience with a similar scenario. My head was filled with questions, fear, and uncertainty. At least the whole site wasn’t “deindexed” - that’s a story for another time (and no I was not responsible)!

The Nofollow, Noindex Fix

I’ve outlined the exact steps I took to get our home page back in the SERPs and back on top in less than a week - YMMV.

Step 1: DO NOT PANIC! Seriously, take a deep breath.

Step 2: Remove the tag from your header immediately

Step 3: Assuming you have a Google Webmasters account (if you don’t have one, get one now), request a site reconsideration request. Forget the ego and tell them exactly what happened and what you did to fix the problem

Step 4: Pray someone from Google responds and have mercy.

Luckily, we were restored quickly - #1 position for our #1 term!

I hope this never happens to you, but if it does, I hope our experience will help you recover the rankings you deserve.

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July 31, 2008

Integral Online Marketing Tops Search Engines

Our company, Integral OM, ranks #1 for the term ‘integral online marketing’. See for yourself on Google or Yahoo! How about a more common phrase like ‘holistic online marketing‘? I’m pretty sure we’re on page 1 for that one, too.

It took us four months between blog posts for this ego inflating boastfulness?!? Hey, we’ve been busy helping our clients make more money through search marketing and conversion optimization.

We’ll try to do better with posting more frequently, but for now, let’s make this a little less self serving.

Fresh Content

We preach to our clients that we need to post new content to their blogs weekly or bi-weekly at minimum. Why? The search engine spiders like to see a pattern of regular updates to our sites and blogs. Every time you create a blog post, you create a new page to be indexed by the search engines. If they determine your pattern of posting is frequent, they are more likely to visit your site and index your new pages frequently.

So why is Integral OM ranking so well for these terms? It sure isn’t the frequent blog posting! There are a couple factors at work:

Site Architecture

Our site isn’t complex by a long shot. We’re using the Wordpress blog platform for our site but are able to have a static home page, about, contact, etc. If you configure Wordpress correctly (we use the Semiologic theme), it will do a great job helping you with your SEO. New sites, with new domains, can take some time to get indexed by Google. Our site was indexed and ranking in a matter of a couple days thanks to our architecture and some simple social marketing promotion techniques! Sandbox shmandbox

castleCN0331_1.jpg

If you look at the pages (I know… it won’t take long), observe the text links in the navigation and within the posts. The underlined, blue text is called ‘anchor text’ and the search engines determine, with good reason, that this text is important. When you determine through your methodical research what keyword phrases you want to rank high in the SERPs for be sure you use these phrases in your anchor text within your own site. This is all part of the internal linking strategy.

Off Page Factors

Depending on the level of competition for your niche, the action that happens away from your site can have a significantly greater impact than the content and architecture of your site. Don’t get me wrong, you need to do the right things on your site but if you want to rank well in a competitive niche, you have to work on creating inbound links (popularity) to your site. We’re not talking garbage links that some unscrupulous vendor may offer - links that can be determined to be part of a bad neighborhood and completely discounted. Think of links as a way to promote your site. You want good links, whether it is a simple text link from a niche relevant site, or links from a good article that provides real value for the reader. This is something you can do today!

Competition

Since we’re #1, we must have lots of inbound links, right? Ummm… we have a few but the answer lies in the competitiveness of the example terms I’ve mentioned. They simply don’t have a lot of competition… yet. We feel all agencies should practice integral or holistic marketing so we’re evangelizing. Tangent alert! I’m back. If we want to rank for the more difficult ‘Colorado SEO‘, we have a little more work to do. As of today, we haven’t cracked page 10. Let’s see what we can do about that!

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March 25, 2008

Magnetic Personality to help Denver Dogs

Mod Livin’, Denver’s finest modern furniture store, is hosting a charity event in to benefit the Downtown Animal Care Foundation this Friday and we’ve decorated a puppy.

magnetic personality puppy

Vote for Magnetic Personality today!

It’s been over 20 years since I’ve actually had any sort of art project deadline, so when Jill Warner (business neighbor and co-owner of Mod Livin’) asked me to decorate a polyethylene Eero Aarnio puppy for charity, both my wife and I thought I was crazy for considering it. The reality for so many of us with our own businesses, spouses, kids, mortgage, etc., the availability for projects like this becomes more challenging each year. After fulfilling my weekly priorities for the family and business, I generally try to use all remaining cycles for reflection, relaxation, recreation. Oh yeah, I’m also supposed to be working on this website… Jill is passionate and persuasive!

We chose our neighborhood carefully and made a commitment to become more involved with the community. The puppy project was presented as an opportunity to do just that as well as exercise my right brain. It was coated in Plasti-dip to help the paint adhere and then coated with 2 coats of magnetic paint. The magnetics are so strong my fingers hurt the next day from trying to pull the little buggers apart. My favorite aspect of this puppy - if you don’t like how it’s decorated - it’s easy to change. Special thanks to my wife Mindy for her patience with my time and helping wiht the final touches. The auction supports a great local cause and will be a great party, so come down to the Fax and make a bid and check out Mod’s amazing showroom of mid-century modern furniture and accessories!

Best In Show
Friday, March 28th 7pm - 11pm
Mod Livin’ Showroom at
5327 E. Colfax Ave.

Emcee
Shaul Turner from Fox News will emcee the event!

Music
dj p-funk will be spinning downtempo and deep house beats on the turntables.

Great Food

The Dish Bistro

Mezcal and Rock Bar’s Sean Yontz

Beer

FLYING DOG BREWERY

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February 22, 2008

Introducing Integral OM - online marketing goes holistic

Prior to my current endeavor, I worked in the software engineering world for 12 years as a developer, manager, and analyst. I’ve been working as an online marketer since 2003, getting my start from a Denver online marketing agency that I hold in high esteem. And it’s not just that my wife heads up the PPC department… I still consider them a great partner and asset.

This journey of starting my own business has been one of the greatest undertakings of my life and I truly feel that I am on to something big. I have a vision for how to work with clients, selecting the clients I work with, and how I help their businesses grow. Our holistic online marketing approach that emphasizes that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. As the company evolves it will transcend to become a true integral online marketing agency.

Maybe it’s partially my geeky math background resurfacing (note the mathematical symbol from calculus in our logo), but in this context, the definition of integral is the consideration of all that is essential for completeness. When developing an internet marketing strategy for clients, we consider multiple traffic sources (SEO, PPC, Blogging, Shopping Portals, Social Networks, Affiliate Marketing, etc) – some agencies only focus on one or two. We’ll find your tribe, deliver your message, and track the following:

  • Where are you Customers coming from?
  • What Keyword did they uses to find you?
  • Did their Visit result in a Sale or Lead?

Our plans include implementing and/or monitoring analytics to determine campaign effectiveness. How is traffic evaluated? Are customers finding what they expect when they find your site – do they buy? How do we maximize the traffic we have? To be successful you need more than search engine results – you need holistic online marketing.

Subscribe to our newsletter for offers and tips that are integral to your online marketing efforts.

We wish you much success!

Bryan Phillips

Integral OM

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Integral OM / online marketing goes holistic
200 Quebec St. Bldg 300 #14, Denver, Colorado 80230

Colorado: 303.800.8280
Toll Free: 800.334.6458

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