Does the META ‘keywords’ Tag Matter?

We are often asked if the meta ‘keywords’ tag factors into your search engine ranking. A few years ago search engines began to place considerably less value on meta keywords because the tag was abused. Webmasters and SEOs were stuffing the keywords tag with keywords that often did not even appear in the page. This shift led many SEOs to no longer bother with meta keywords. Many blogs advised against their use.

In Google’s Webmaster Guidelines they have recommended that common misspellings of company names, product names and other words related to your industry be included in the meta ‘description’ tags. We have understood that to be proof that Google does consider meta keywords in their algorithm. It has been our experience that it definitely helps to include keywords in the meta data.

» Hire a Vancouver SEO expert

Web 2.0 and Search Engine Optimization

It would be great if all of those cool new Web 2.0 interactive elements, based upon AJAX and Flash, things like widgets, Google Maps, content overlay panels, etc. were search engine friendly. Unfortunately, these technologies are inherently unfriendly towards search engine spiders. User friendly usually does not translate into search engine friendly.

Should you avoid Web 2.0 functionality that improves the user experience for your visitors? If your budget is incredibly small, perhaps. In an ideal world I believe you can have your cake and eat it too. You can harness Web 2.0 technologies for wider syndication, improving conversion ratios, enhancing the user experience to engage your audience and still rank on the first page. I believe that you should design for your site’s visitors, not the search engines.

Search engines will not index AJAX and Flash you just drop onto the page as is. A common misconception is that somehow AJAX (Asynchronius JavaScript and XML) is superior to Flash when it comes to achieving top rankings on Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.com. When it comes to SEO, they both suck!

But for the visitor, Web 2.0 content delivery can keep them returning almost every day. Like Flash, AJAX can greatly enhance the user experience, pulling data seamlessly into an already loaded web page. Your visitor doesn’t have to click and wait as one page after the other is loaded. This saves your visitors time and they appreciate it. There are some workarounds we employ that make it possible to index the dynamic content that is generally invisible to search engine spiders. The ‘J’ in AJAX is ‘JavaScript’. Search engines can’t execute JavaScript commands. While Google is able to index text and links inside Flash, some additional text must be made available at a markup level to assist them in indexing your content. Because Google can index some of your Flash content I believe it could be argued that Flash sucks less than AJAX when it comes to currying the favour of the search engines. One solution with Flash is to provide a progressive enhancement approach, where content is provided for both Flash enabled and non-Flash visitors. With AJAX, just as with Flash, progressive enhancement renders a non-JavaScript version of the application for search engine spiders and JavaScript-disabled browsers.

» Hire a Vancouver SEO professional

SEO, It Never Ends

SEO is not a one time deal, a ‘set it and forget it’ procedure. Getting to the first page can take six months to a year; and its going to be an ongoing competitive struggle every month to stay there. Your competitors want the very same top-10 spots you do and they hire SEO professionals to help them get those positions.

SEO in a Nutshell

I’m frequently asked to define SEO. First of all, a lot more than Search Engine Optimization is required to market your products and services effectively on the Internet. Traffic is only part of the equation.

I firmly believe in SEO web design, where optimization of the site occurs on the design, code and content levels. I get excited about websites that are built right from the ground up, sites that rank well, sell well and build your company’s brand. Search engine optimization (SEO) as a Band Aid™ that is applied to a site with poor rankings, and little or no traffic, it is certainly better than nothing, it is not the optimal SEO strategy.

Your site should be designed to inform and enlighten, and it should persuade your visitors to take action. Keywords, back links, content development, social media, PPC… they’re just tools we employ to bring you more visitors who will increase your goal conversions.

» Design + Traffic + Conversion = Sales

SEO Tip: Don’t Use Too Much JavaScript

Searchbots are not designed to read, follow or index JavaScript code. If your website contains a few lines of text in the JavaScript code, chances are the searchbots will ignore the entire block of code along with your text.

JavaScript menus are the same as Flash menus; unreadable. The search engines will not follow your page links. It is best to avoid JavaScript menus entirely. If you feel you must have the multi-tier drop-downs, provide HTML text links in the footer or in the content of your home page. Some of the AJAX menu and billboard slideshow code now includes unordered lists of HTML links, and is advertised as being ‘search engine friendly’. If the links appear within JavaScript those lists are almost certainly being ignored by the searchbots.

Try to keep the use of JavaScript to a minimum. If the use of JavaScript is unavoidable consider creating an external JavaScript file and link to it.

SEO Tip: Choosing the Right Keywords

Keywords are the cornerstone of your search engine optimization. Getting them right can mean the difference between being a nobody on the Internet and coming up as the first site on Google.

Brand Keywords are associated with your company’s brand, or the product line your market. Many website owners will target a short tail keyword like ‘widgets’, where including the brand XYZ to create ‘xyz widgets’ would increase their visibility immediately.

Regional Keywords associate your location with a product or service you market. Targeting ‘vancouver widgets’ would be more effective than targeting ‘widgets’ alone, and a long tail term like ‘vancouver xyz widgets’ could yield even more traffic.

Demand/Supply Ratio We look for keywords with a high demand (heavily searched) and low supply (not promoted heavily by competitors’ sites as yet). This approach provides the most traffic over the shortest time frame.

» Hire a Vancouver Keyword Research Professional

How Google PageRank Passes from One Page to Another

A page with high PageRank will pass some of its value to a lower PR page through the link. When your website’s pages are effectively interlinked, for maximum relevancy, PageRank is distributed more evenly through your website.

Writing high quality content is the most effective way to ‘court’ links from relevant sites. As more sites link to yours in a natural way, in blog post and article content, your site gains authority.

» What is Google PageRank?

» Hire a Vancouver SEO Professional

What is Google PageRank?

According to Google, their PR value defines the “uniquely democratic nature of the web” and “using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value.” Google considers links from one web page to another as a ‘vote’ for the linked page’s content. Google believes that a link from a relatively obscure website should carry a lower value than a link from a leading authority site. The relevance of search phrases and traffic also determine the value of the referring page. Google PageRank is the ‘weight’ Google places on a specific web page, based upon it’s authority, keyword relevance and traffic.

Google PR is expressed as a numerical value on a scale of 0 to 10. If a website has a PR0 to PR2, chances are it’s a new website. Websites with a PR3 to PR5 are fairly well established. PR6 websites are generally well established and have a lot of high-quality links to them. You won’t find many sites in the PR7 to PR10 range.

Is Google PR the ultimate measure of a website’s value, quality of content and linkability? Absolutely not! Some of the most useless link farm sites ever constructed, the ones that sell their PR6 links offer no content of any value to anyone, just pages and pages of exchange and affiliate links. Other beautiful blogs and sites with hundreds of well-written carefully researched keyword-rich articles will still receive a PR0 after a several  years on the web.

When we look for naturally occurring links we do consider the PageRank of the site, and particularly the page we’d like our article published on, but PR is only one of the many considerations.

» How Google PageRank Passes from One Page to Another

» Hire a Vancouver SEO Professional

It All Begins with Keyword Research

If you target the wrong keyword search term, and rank #1 on Google, Yahoo! and Bing for that keyword, but nobody is actually searching for that keyword term, you’ve wasted a lot of time and money. You won’t receive any traffic from that top-5 ranking. Keywords with high search volume represent the ways your target audience is searching for information about your product or service.

We take a reverse engineering approach to build the keyword lists we target for our clients. Once we know what your customers are looking for all we have to do is target those keywords in your content, article distribution, press releases, pay per click advertising and link building strategy.

Need some help with keyword research? »

A Sales Funnel That Works In Today’s Economy

Quite a few years ago I spent six months in the trenches, selling vacuum cleaners. The phone girl in the office would set up a bogus presentation with some fabricated story about winning a set of steak knives. We’d drop off the knifes and pressure our way into the house. Once in we’d whip through the canned presentation and hard close the hell out of the unprepared couple until they broke down and bought the overpriced machine. I haven’t seen a vac salesman in many years and I’m sure the world is jubilant to have seen the back of that lot. Always be closing?… sorry, the hard sell is dead.

Contrary to what people selling ebooks will tell you, the internet is not becoming an easier place to market. Every day it’s becoming more competitive as more sites come online, competing for the same top ten keywords. Bold in-your-face advertising is either ignored or frequently turns off the very people you are trying to reach forever. So what’s working? Here’s the sales funnel that gets strangers to like you, grow to trust you and eventually buy from you again and again.

Connection & Relationship Building Through Social Media

The sales funnel process begins by creating connections and building relationships. The top three tools for developing connections today are Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. One of the things I’m hearing from people in sales is that their managers expect them to use outdated and ineffective ‘interruption marketing’ techniques like cold calling, email blast campaigns, annoying follow-up emails and phone calls, while their computer access to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube has been blocked. Access to these highly effective tools should be channeled – to keep it on a business and not entertainment level – but highly encouraged, not blocked.

Most of the people who use social media are using it 100% incorrectly. They’re trying to sell to their new followers and friends. Let’s suppose you met a stranger in a Starbucks lineup. You wouldn’t launch right into a sales presentation. That would turn the person off and end the conversation on the spot. You’d probably notice things you have in common and strike up a conversation that did not include what you do for a living. You’d discover that they stop in at Starbucks on the way to work and note the time. The next time you bumped into them you could refer to the last conversation and pick up where you left off. If it felt right you might exchange business cards on the second or third ‘chance’ meeting. On the next meet-up you might ask them some questions about their work and tell them a bit about what you do. You’d mention that you checked out their blog and they may comment that they’d checked your website as well. If they expressed interest in your products or services you might pop out to the car to get them a brochure. Only after cultivating the relationship a while would it likely be wise to attempt to schedule a full presentation. (There are exceptions of course. Sometimes the person is actually hot and bothered for your product and will pounce on you, begging to buy, but I wouldn’t count on that happening too often.)

That’s exactly the way you use social media. Twitter and Facebook are places to meet people. You want them to like you and begin to trust you. You DO NOT SELL there.

Use your micro-blog posts to educate your followers and friends. Give first, don’t take. Give them something that will improve their life or make them money.

Your Central Hub

The most popular central hub format is a blog. Your new social media friend likes you. You’ve had a few chats. Since they like you it occurs to them that they might also like to do business with you, so they check you out. Your social media profile should include a link to your central hub. A common mistake in creating a blog is to be too corporate – or worse – to use it as a platform to launch into a sales pitch.

Your blog should be a friendly place for your prospect to find out more about you. Your visitors should see some of your personality in the posts. If you give back to the community this would be a good place to include a post that thanks everyone that participated in the charity golf event you organized. The information you provide should be informative and interesting, without really selling. It’s a place to educate your customers and prospects. Your blog should establish you as being very knowledgeable about your products, services and industry. Make sure you make it easy for your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed and perhaps a newsletter. And provide genuine value to your subscribers.

Your blog posts can include links to more information on your website. The people that follow these links, or return to chat with you on Twitter or Facebook, are beginning to show some genuine interest.

Your Website

By the time your prospects go to your website they like you, they trust you and they are looking for more information. Make it easy for them to take the next step in contacting you. Include links back to the social networking sites where they found you. Include forms, ‘Get More Information’ or ‘Request a Quote’ buttons on most information pages so they don’t have to hunt for contact information. Also, adding live chat functionality increases conversion on most websites.

» Need some help getting things set up?