SEO Tutorial and Guide » Search Engine Optimization

What Google say about Keywords Meta Tag?

Preeti Prakash — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:26:54 +0000

In 1998, when Google came into existence, other search engines like Infoseek and Altavista were indexing sites using the keywords meta tag. But, keyword meta tag, being a webmaster controlled parameter, can be easily manipulated to stuff it up with irrelevant and undesirable keywords.

While not giving any advantage to keyword stuffing, Google came up with the idea of using external links to rank the websites. Webmasters, having the older conception in mind, believed that Google too uses the keyword meta tag.

Thus, since its inception, Google had never used the keyword meta tag, since people started to stuff it up with keywords even irrelevant to their website. Other search engines might use it but Google, which is the major source of traffic for websites, don’t bother about it.

Finally, after lots of confusions and contradictions, Google officially announced on their webmaster blog that they DO NOT use keyword or keywords meta tag for ranking in search results. Although this is an earlier known fact, but most of the SEOs didn’t believed it and they had the misconception that keyword tag plays a major role in getting higher rankings. It doesn’t solve any purpose other than helping your competitors to steal the keywords which you had chosen after putting in lots of time and efforts.

Google definitely use other meta tags, such as description tag, which is displayed in search results, if it is informative. So next time if some one uses your brand name in his keywords tag, don’t bother to sue him. It’s not going to benefit him or harm you in any way.

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What is the future of SEO in the world of ever-evolving search engines?

Preeti Prakash — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:16:10 +0000

Aaron Wall raised a question ‘Will SEO be dead within next two years?’

Future of SEO - Dead or Live?

Most of the SEOs are of the opinion “NO, SEO will continue till search engines continue to rank sites. Though the techniques used may change.”

I would say that SEO might be dead. As the search engines especially Google are changing the way they rank sites, SEO will not be needed anymore. Since its inception, algorithm of Google to rank sites has changed a lot. Earlier it used to rank sites based on the keywords in ‘keyword’ Meta tag. Later it made the use of this tag obsolete.

The latest algorithm is much intelligent which considers the demographics and geographical location of the user and the search history (if you are logged in your account). And in the future, it has plans of developing the search engine into a more intelligent machine which will show the results according to the intent of the person using it. So, I guess SEO comes in no way.

But yes, if SEO means to you reaching your targeted audience rather than just getting top rankings on search engines, then you have a long way to go. SEO (better to be called as online marketing) in the true sense, means making your site impressive and useful for customers. Building your brand and reaching your potential customers should be your motive.

Rightly quoted by Bob Massa:

“I believe anyone can be successful at online marketing or even traffic generation and search engine placement specifically, if they just stop looking for ways to trick machines and instead look for ways to connect with humans.”

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Google PageRank update 2008-09

Preeti Prakash — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:51:51 +0000

Today, on 31st December, Google has started PageRank update. PageRank is a measure of quality and quantity of links of a page. It identifies the authority of a website. There are around 200 factors which are considered to measure it. These factors include incoming and outgoing links, web page content, W3C validation, CSS validation, traffic received, age of the website, and lots more.

Although the importance of Google PageRank is reducing, yet many webmasters aim to achieve a high PageRank. It is updated after every 3-4 months and thus; don’t reflect the present position of a website. Remember, the actual ranking of a website changes daily, PR updation is just toolbar page rank update.

This time’s PR update is a New Year gift for me and many other bloggers and website owners whose sites jumped up to a higher PR levels. I got surprised to see that AskPreeti.com received PR1 this time and one of my client’s site received a PR4 directly from No PageRank. So, for me it’s a good beginning of New Year. Hope, for you too, it will be great. The fluctuations can be seen till 1st week of January.

How did your sites faired? Please post your experience about this time’s PR updation.

Wishing you a very Happy New Year 2009.

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What are the expected changes at Google in 2009?

Preeti Prakash — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:43:47 +0000

Matt Cutts got interviewed at PubCon by Mike McDonald. This interview turned to be an exciting and informative source to peek into the expected changes at Google in future. Here is the video interview:

In response to Bruce Clay’s claim that “ranking is dead”, Matt gave a clear explanation that with the personalization and localization of search results, ranking is no longer important. The task of an SEO is not only to rank a site in top results, but the more challenging thing to do, i.e. to bring traffic and increase conversions. So, SEO’s job becomes more than just an ‘optimizer’ to that of an ‘online marketer’. Clients must also understand this and while hiring a person/company for SEO, and emphasizing to see a long report on rankings; they should be more concerned for the traffic and popularity of their products and site.

Matt also pointed out that Google is getting better at crawling flash files. So, there is more scope of uploading videos and images to attract more people. But at the same time, as the world is going mobile, you must keep user experience in mind. Your flash site may get crawled by Google, might look attractive on internet but a person viewing your site on mobile phone will not be able to view anything. So, keep the flash content to minimum till mobile phones become flash compatible. Also, IMO, don’t make it default to force users to see it. Always include a non-flash version to give your visitors a choice.

So, 2009 brings with it the following trends in Big G:

A broader view of SEO that includes marketing and social networking.
Blackhat SEO will become more malicious.
Sub-domains Vs. sub-folders for geo-targeting.

So, all the ‘Online Marketers’ out there, pull your sleeves up, adjust your spectacles ( ) and get ready to face the changes of Google in New Year 2009!

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Improve your PPC campaign with Google’s new Search-Based Keyword Tool

Preeti Prakash — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:20:06 +0000

Google is always busy innovating new tools and strategies for the website owners. They are their own competitors and always come up with a product which is much more useful and handy than their previous product.

Let’s check out what they have brought for us this festive season.

Search-Based Keyword Tool

A nice Christmas gift for guys having e-commerce sites! Thanks Google!

What this tool will do?

In your adwords campaign, you might have accidentally left some of the keywords which people are searching for. This tool will help you to target more keywords in your adwords campaign which can earn you more profits.

The results are based on search queries. This tool also tells you the category and bid you can place for each keyword.

Moreover, an interesting thing about this tool is that you can use it as a competition analysis tool. If you are going to start a new business and want keyword data, just put in the site domain and click go, it will get you the keywords relevant to that site.

So, what are you waiting for? Start using Search-Based Keyword Tool today and earn lots of profit!

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