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.

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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.

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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?

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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? »

Old School Marketing vs What’s Working Now

Interruption Marketing

Old school marketing is essentially ‘Interruption’ marketing. As most business owners and sales professionals have discovered, these ‘outbound’ marketing strategies have become considerably less effective over the past few years. Many marketing gurus attribute the decline to busier lives. We just don’t have time to be interrupted during our busy days any more.

Outbound Marketing Strategies
- Trade shows
- Direct mail
- TV advertising
- Radio advertising
- Magazine and newspaper ads
- Telemarketing
- Email blast campaigns

Permission Marketing

We are all striving to gain some control of our time and our lives, yet we need more information than ever to make educated choices. As modern consumers we don’t have time to be interrupted, but we are receptive to information we can turn on and off like a faucet.

‘Inbound’ marketing or ‘permission’ marketing very effectively reaches people who do make the time to research products and services that will enrich their personal lives (B2C) and will add value to their career or business (B2B).

Fortunately, a brand new set of marketing tools have been developed to take advantage of this new trend.

Inbound Marketing Strategies
- Increasing visibility (SEO/SEM)
- Social networking (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Blogging and RSS content delivery
- Offering free trials
- Offering free software
- Public relations
- Permission newsletters

Selling in today’s economy can be very frustrating. If you can’t cold call any more, they won’t read your direct mail or print ads and it’s become very uncool (even illegal) to spam them with email, just how are you supposed to reach new prospects?

Increasing visibility on search engines, blogging and social media have become the vehicles for connecting with customers.

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The Ideal Web Site – Part 6 of a Series

The Ideal Website Converts Visitors into Customers

At the end of the day, the reason for having your website is to increase sales. It’s not about winning design awards (except perhaps for the designer ). It’s not about about developing a large internet audience. If you can’t convert your visitors into customers, or develop revenue from your traffic by other means, your site has failed to provide a return on investment.

Does your website even have a conversion strategy?

Does it provide unique and valuable information? Is your site worth bookmarking for return visits? Do you offer an RSS feed to enable your visitors to subscribe to updates?

If you’re selling something, or wish to achieve a visitor response, do you have effective ad copy? When you change your copy, do you monitor the response?

Does your website take the visitor by the hand and lead them through your content with a planned traffic flow strategy? Are you asking for a response at each step or hoping your visitors read their way through all the pages in the process before taking action? Many of our clients are amazed to discover that their visitors were already sold on page one or two . All we had to do was provide a ‘take action now’ button to dramatically improve sales.

Do you have analytics installed? Are you evaluating your stats each week? Do you tweak your content constantly to provide better results?

We believe that:

Design + Traffic + Conversion = Sales

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The Ideal Web Site – Part 5 of a Series

The Ideal Website Accommodates the Three User Types

Your website will receive three types of visitors:

1) Search-oriented user
2) Menu-oriented user
3) Media-oriented user

The search-oriented user will locate the search field on your site and enter keywords, hoping to be presented with a list of several pages that cover their topic of interest. They will select the one that sounds most suitable. They may then return to the search results to select other pages, or refine their search.

The menu-oriented user relies on a well planned menu and navigational system to locate pages that provide the exact information they seek. Your website’s navigation must be user friendly and logical. Ideally, your visitor should be able to find the page they’re after within 3 to 5 clicks. Home pages that offer a few initial choices in ‘magazine ad’ format, and lead the visitors with a well-planned traffic flow strategy are very affective for these visitors. ‘Breadcrumbs’ are also very helpful, enabling these visitors to retrace their steps to follow different forks in the information pathway.

The media-oriented user doesn’t want to search or navigate through your menus to locate initial information about your product(s) or service(s). These visitors want to watch a short summary presentation on the home page that explains what you’re about and what you have to offer. If they like what they see, they will click the links in or surrounding the presentation for more information. If it looks like they will have to click through a bunch of pages to locate information they will immediately return to the search engine to try another site. The home page ‘billboard’ created in AJAX or Flash is ideal for providing media to these visitors. (Note: A media billboard is not to be confused with the annoying Flash intros that take up the whole first page.)

The most effective websites provide excellent searchability, a logical intuitive navigational system and some media to provide a quick summary of your benefits and strategic marketing advantage.

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The Ideal Web Site – Part 4 of a Series

The Ideal Website is Attractive Enough

Effective Internet marketing follows the 80/20 rule; where 80% of your investment is ‘Super SEO’ (promoting the hell out of your website and brand online) and where only 20% is the website itself.

• A pretty website without top rankings on Google, Yahoo! and Bing/MSN is pretty much useless.

• An award-winning website without traffic just plain sucks. They cost more money and take more time to design, so without traffic (sales)  they become a bigger liability.

• A drop dead gorgeous website that does not convert visitors into qualified leads or customers has failed as an advertising and marketing medium. Period.

An attractive website is only worth a damn when it provides a positive return on your investment.

Are we against sexy design and design awards? Absolutely not! My own epiphany came about seven years ago when one of our clients received a beautiful award for the website we developed for them. My customer called me to congratulate me on the design achievement, but then lamented over the site’s poor performance on the bottom line. I reminded him that we had proposed an aggressive SEO and online marketing campaign but he had declined. On further reflection I realized it was my fault. I’m the internet marketing professional, I know what really matters when it comes to ROI and I hadn’t absolutely insisted on a program to drive traffic to their site. I had allowed the client to invest their entire online marketing budget on an award-winning design and there had been nothing left for assuring the site had traffic or the ability to convert traffic into customers.

A good website is ‘attractive enough’ that visitors feel they are dealing with a solid, reputable company. When search engine rankings and other sources of traffic are in place, and the site is generating enough sales to more than offset the cost of additional design, it may be time to revisit the design with a facelift. If your site isn’t in the top ten ranking positions for all of your primary keyword search terms, put your money into SEO, social networking and link building, not a flashy media presentation few people will ever see.

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The Ideal Web Site – Part 3 of a Series

The Ideal Website is Search Engine Friendly

Over 80% of the traffic on most successful websites will come from being listed on the first page (top-10) on Google, Yahoo! and MSN. The rest of your traffic will typically come from PPC (pay per click) advertising, inbound links from theme related websites and being listed on the second or third page of the top three engines. If your site isn’t listed in the first three SERPs (search engine results pages) your site should be considered ‘invisible’ to the Internet.

Most sites aren’t search engine friendly. They don’t rank well because they don’t deserve a top position. They have very little content and the content they do offer isn’t considered of much value to searchers. Typical ‘toot your own horn’ ad copy on the home and about us page, tables of prices, forms, Flash photo galleries, JavaScript widgets, most short description shopping cart pages, etc. are not good content.

Search engines love fresh unique content that is rich in naturally occuring keywords, internally linked to other theme content in the site. Content should be added at least weekly or even daily. Great content encourages naturally occurring links from other theme-related websites and trackbacks from blogs. Over time a website or blog will accumulate hundreds or even thousands of posts and/or articles.

Developing quality content involves a commitment. Many companies have several bloggers or a designated writer. If your company does not have anyone with the time to create content on a consistent basis, there are SEO copywriting services and web content writers that will help make your site search engine friendly.

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The Ideal Web Site – Part 2 of a Series

The Ideal Website Targets the Right Keywords

One of the biggest mistakes website owners make is targeting keywords that are unlikely to provide a return. Achieving a #1 ranking on Google for a keyword search term nobody is searching for is a waste of time and money. For search engine marketing, keywords fall into two major categories: broad generic (head) keywords, branded and regional (tail) keywords. The stiffest competition is in the short head keywords.

If you entered the head keywords ‘storage products’ into Google today you’d see over sixty-one million pages indexed. That’s a lot of competition. In the top five you’d find Rubbermaid. For a company with almost unlimited marketing resources very generic keywords may be worth pursuing. We have a client in the Vancouver area. By choosing regional (tail) keywords we have been able to secure the top position on Google for ‘vancouver storage products’. The amount of traffic received for their SEO dollars has proven to be a good investment. Pursuing top rankings for ‘storage products’ with the budget we had to work with would have been a poor investment, with little or no returns. If you entered ‘spacesaver storage canada’ today you would discover that these branded (tail) keywords also returned a #1 ranking for our client.

Whether you’re pursuing organic rankings or pay per click traffic, selecting the right keywords can be one of the primary decsions that determine your online success. Keyword analysis is the starting point.