There are certain tricks and techniques in SEO industry, which can fetch you real quick and top ranking in short run and get banned for ever, which I am discussing in this article. Before optimizing any site, always follow code of ethics and never spam.

In this article, I will be discussing about meta tags. How to use the them effectively without spamming. Its not just another article about meta tags. Read on to find out more..

Meta Tags are very important for your website’s visibility. Many search engines read them from your site when you submit it to them.

META tags were developed and made a HTML standard for the purpose of addressing specific information about your web page that does not affect the way your page actually looks.

1. Overstuffing Metatags : Believe me or not , there are still many people and web masters around who think that meta tags are magic bullet. Its not anymore.

Mistake No. 1: Stuffing keywords in Title

Mistake No. 2: Stuffing keywords in Description

Mistake No. 3: The keyword tag.

Mistake No. 1 : Stuffing keywords in Title

I agree that its very important to include your main keywords in title tag. But there are certain things, which you should remember, as title tag is the most important tag.

Syntax of Title Tag :

Now, lets me show you live demo on Title tag. Please search for "Office furniture uk" in Google, without double quotes. See the results. This is the first site listed under Google.

These are the above first 4 results arrived for the term "Office furniture UK" in google. Now have a look over title and description. The first title does not make any sense and its stuffed with keywords, though its ranking no.1 it would have less click thorough as compared to no 2 and no 3.

A fair and attractive title would be something like :

Look at the above two titles. It conveys some message with a perfect sense. The best possible keywords have been used and its catchy too. Just by crafting a good title you can increase your click through, even though you are not listed in top 1 or 2 positions. I hope now you must have got some idea about crafting good title. Now lets jump to next step. Yeah. Description Tag.

Description Tag :

Description tag is still important as most of the search engines still give importance to it. Sometimes even google picks up description tag. An ideal description should be somewhere within 150 to 200 characters, which correctly describes the content of the page. Make sure to place 2 to 3 important keyword phrases within first 100 characters.

Tip 1 : Make sure that description tag comes immediately after title tag.

Tip 2. Make sure that the first paragraph or the heading of the page contains 2 to 3 important keyword phrase.

Tip 3. If possible you the targeted keyword phrase in text links to get boost.

Things to avoid :

1. Do not stuff the description tag with keywords.
2. Do not use generic keywords, use keyword phrases
3. Do not repeat the title in description

Keyword Tag :

The keyword tag is almost dead. Most of the web masters try to flood the key word tag with all sorts of keywords. Hardly couple of search engines gives a bit of importance to it.

Please note that, directories like Yahoo, Dmoz & About does not consider keyword tag or meta tags. I do not recommend using keyword tag. If you use the keyword tag, do not include more than 8 keyword phrases.

Do’s

1. Include only important long keyword phrases.
2. Don’t use generic / general terms. Be specific
3. Use Word tracker to find good keyword phrases

Don’ts

1. Do not spam by stuffing all the possible keywords.
2. Do not include the keywords, which are not related to your website
3. Do not repeat any tag ( title, description, keyword tag ) you might get boost by repeating, but never know when you will be banned.

Other important things to remember :

1. Meta tags ( Title & Description ) should reflect the content the page. Do not put your company name in title.
2. Do not try to target more than 2 to 3 keyword phrases per page
3. Try to include your important keyword phrases in h1 to h6 tag.
4. Include your important keyword phrases in tag, bold tag.
5. You will get boost if you include your important keyword phrases in anchor tag.
6. Do not forget to Include your important keyword phrases in first paragraph of your web page.
7. Try to put your important keyword phrases in alt text. ( for images )
8. Make sure that title and description is crafted neatly and attracts both visitors and search engines.

Robots (Recommended)

See the workshop report at W3 for the full text.

default = empty = "ALL"

"NONE" = "NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"

The filler is a comma separated list of terms:

ALL, NONE, INDEX, NOINDEX, FOLLOW, NOFOLLOW.

Discussion: This tag is meant to provide users who cannot control the robots.txt file at their sites. It provides a last chance to keep their content out of search services. It was decided not to add syntax to allow robot specific permissions within the meta-tag.

INDEX means that robots are welcome to include this page in search services.

FOLLOW means that robots are welcome to follow links from this page to find other pages.

So a value of "NOINDEX" allows the subsidiary links to be explored, even though the page is not indexed. A value of "NOFOLLOW" allows the page to be indexed, but no links from the page are explored (this may be useful if the page is a free entry point into pay-per-view content, for example. A value of "NONE" tells the robot to ignore the page.

Conclusion

There are other meta tags like, Author, language, Copyright, Re-visit, classification etc. which are ignored by most of the search engines. Experience says, use the three tags wisely ( title, description & keywords ). You will be attracting both visitors and search engines. You can also use our free meta tag generator at http://www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com/meta_tag_generator.htm

For more information or any comments / suggestion on this article please EMail me. I will be glad to clarify the doubts / queries with live examples.

About The Author

Author: Rajesh V. Tavakari is SEO Specialist of Website Promotion & Ranking Services, an Internet Marketing firm specializing in

Website promotion & Website optimization.

URL: http://www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com

rajesh@website-promotion-ranking-services.com

You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the author name and URL remain intact.

Let’s talk about what keyword density is and how to improve your keyword density on your web site. To improve your keyword density ratio there are three parts that we will need address.

Part 1: Content

When it comes to the Search Engines content is king! Yes king! Search Engines want web sites that are rich in content. Content is words that are embedded in text on your web site. Your keyword density ratio is one of the most important ingredients of getting good Search Engine rankings and influences the Search Engines on how to rank your web site accordingly.

For those of you who are not sure what keyword density is and how the Search Engines use it to configure their ranking structure, let me explain. Keyword density is the total number of times your keywords appear within the content of your web page, including text, hyper links, and the ALT tag of your images. I will explain each of them so you will have a clear understanding of the principles. Your keyword density is measured by a simple mathematical formula that is used to configure your keyword density ratio.

To configure your keyword density ratio you must take the number of times a keyword appears in the content of your web site, divide it by the total number of words and that’s your keyword density ratio. I will give you a quick example of keyword "Marketing":

Example:

The keyword "Marketing appears 47 times in text on your web page and if you have 315 words on your web page, your keyword density ratio would then be 15%.

Obviously the higher your keyword density is, the greater influence you’ll have getting the Search Engines to give you a better ranking. Becareful though, you don’t want to over repeat the same combination of words and/or sentences just to increase your keyword density. Your website could end up looking like a broken record.

Part 2: Hyper Links

How many times have you seen links that say "Click Here"? A lot huh! If you are currently using this type of linking or going to be linking, then you want to pay attention, because this is really important to your keyword density ratio. I am going to use my web site for these examples so that you can understand clearly.

Example #1

Click Here For The Absolute Truth To Internet Marketing & The Secrets To Online Wealth

If you were to use this type of linking in Example #1. The Search Engines would pick all the "Click Here" hyper links and would think that the words "click here" are keywords that describe the content of your web site.

So remove all the "Click Here’s" and replace them with keywords that describe your web site. That is the only way to increase your keyword density when you are using links. You should end up with something like this in Example #2:

Example #2

Inside Internet Marketing The Absolute Truth To Internet Marketing & The Secrets To Online Wealth.

Part 3: Images

First of all if you have images on your web site, the images don’t mean squat to the Search Engines. When the Search Engines robots crawl your web site, those images are nothing more than blank spots. The same blank spots are shown to the surfers that have arrived on your web site with the images turned off. You’ll find that many surfers surf the web with images turned off.

This is where the alternate tag (ALT Tag) comes into play. The ALT tag is used to describe your image to the surfers that surf the web with images off and most importantly, improves your keyword density. Here is an example of how to install the ALT tag in your images:

When describing the image you want to be very descriptive and use keywords. Most people don’t install their ALT Tag properly, for instance, on their logo image they’ll use "My Logo" in the ALT Tag. Which is the wrong way to effectively use the ALT Tag, there are no keywords in "My Logo".

About The Author

Rich Hamilton, Jr

Author Of: "Inside Internet Marketing"

http://www.InsideNetMarketing.com

There are quite a few new software and search engine optimization solutions and products out there these days. The main focus of them seems to concentrate on getting the best keywords for your site. Some even offer to scan your competitors web site in order to find out which keywords they are using, suggesting that all you have to do is copy them and you too will show up within the top ten listings.

Unfortunately, most companies who offer these types of services are merely preying on the lack of consumer knowledge in regards to true search engine optimization (SEO). They are banking on the fact that there is an uninitiated market out there which will unknowingly purchase these products. Usually the web site selling the product is a plethora of testimonials and hyped marketing jargon designed to do one thing, convince you the product is the greatest thing on Earth. I feel sorry for the consumers who do purchase these types of so-called search engine marketing programs, only to discover after their money is spent, that there is a lot more to online marketing than meets the eye.

It also leaves a bad taste in their collective mouths and truly inhibits the integrity of the SEO industry. Once burnt, the average consumer is a lot more wary about SEO the next time around. Many simply fail to believe in SEO at all after a bad experience, which does neither the consumer nor the professional SEO firm any good whatsoever.

One of the latest marketing forays by this type of pseudo-optimization software is the claim that all you need to do is analyze what your competition has on their web site for their keywords and phrases, and simply copy that formula for success. Yeah right! They guarantee you a top ten placement by simply following this procedure. See what the competition uses and do the same. It worked for them, so it will work for you, right? Please don’t fall into this trap. If it were that easy don’t you think everyone would be doing it? As a web site owner, use a little common sense and look beyond the hype.

A competitive analysis of a web site of similar nature to your own is in itself an excellent idea, but let’s get realistic about it. Sites which rank near the top of their categories are likely to have great keywords and phrases placed throughout the web site, but that’s only one part of the equation. The top sites also have a lot more going for them, such as excellent content, great meta tags and a good number of incoming links all relative to the subject matter on the site, to mention only a few requirements. By simply copying their keywords into your own site, you haven’t helped yourself at all. In fact you may have seriously damaged your chances for success.

Here’s why: Let’s say you are in the hot tub business. Your competitor sells fiberglass hot tubs, you do not. Obviously if you simply copied the keyword phrase "fiberglass hot tubs" into your own keywords not only may you be a fool, but if the search engine spiders come by and see that particular phrase within your keywords, but find no reference nor content on your site to support that phrase, you may be penalized. Which in layman’s terms means your site could have a ‘black mark’ against it. Search engines tend to greatly frown upon web sites which have keywords and phrases that are unsupported within the sites textual content. It’s one of the measures they take to weed out unscrupulous marketers, who will chock a site full of car insurance terms to get a high ranking, but once clicked upon, ends up at an adult XXX site.

Although misrepresenting your site may not have been your intent, by merely copying your competitors keywords and using them as your own, you run the risk of being found guilty by association. Try explaining that to the search engines once the damage has been done.

The analysis of your competitors keywords and phrases is a good exercise to ensure you have similar terminology within the content of your site. Use them as an example of how it should be done. Do not, I repeat do not simply copy them to your own site! Your site should have its own tone and individuality. Treat your own keywords with respect. You must have appropriate textual content on your own pages to support the keywords. Anything less is an exercise in futility.

At its best, a competitive keyword analysis will give you a good basic idea which words you should be using within the content of your site. Incorporate some of them into your own sentences and descriptions but try and keep a realistic approach to the process.

One of most valuable aspects of a keyword analysis is the ability to spot words and terms you may be missing from your content. But before simply cutting and pasting, take a little time to find out which terms have the most ‘weight’ or most value, when it comes to usage by the searching public. Think about the keywords and terms originating from the searchers’ point of view. If you were trying to find your site without knowing it was on the Internet, what would you search for? What would Aunt Martha search for? What words and terms is your targeted customer likely to use when searching for your goods or services? Here’s a real tip: Don’t guess!

There are tools you can use to assist you in this decision making process. Take your competitive analysis keywords and run them through a site such as Overture’s Keyword Selection tool

Originally designed for advertisers to select the best terms for pay for click advertising, it will show you how many times the term you used was searched for within the past few months. You may discover that "hot tubs" although generic enough to score highly, could be greatly enhanced when used as a term by adding a single word such as "accessory" or "portable". The power of a single word (different from your competitors) also helps to set your site apart and dare we say, in some cases, may help your site to rise above them.

Remember - Choose the most popular ’searched for words and terms’ and ensure they are contained within the content on your site before using them as keywords within tags or title descriptions.

Mehul vyas, is a founding partner and Director of Marketing for Vyas Infotch Pvt Ltd. The firm specializes in the development and implementation search engine optimization technologies and solutions for the improvement of web site placement within the Internet’s top search engines. The company is regarded by many to be the world leader in its field, with clients in 57 countries around the world.

http://www.ranosofttechnologies.com

The importance of keywords

Keywords or key phrases you choose will determine how your site is positioned in the search engines. It is always better to have lots of pages each focusing on a small group of keywords. This will give them more relevance to each individual page.

For example if your site is about shoes you may have lots of different types of shoes.

Your index page should have a menu leading into each of the different categories of shoes.

You might have a page for sandals, one for platform shoes as well as stilettos, court shoes and flat heel shoes.

Choosing keywords

First you have to think like your customer. What would they type into a search engine if they wanted to find the products you are selling.

Use phrases as well as single words. Often someone looking for a product or service will type in several words. For example a customer may want to buy a shoe with stiletto heels. They may type in "stiletto heel shoe", "black stiletto" "stiletto heel","stiletto high heel" or "high heel shoe"

brainstorming keywords.

Start by thinking of as many keywords associated with your site as you can. To make it easier there is a free tool for this which can be found at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

It will give you the number of times this word has been searched for in the last month. This will also give you a guide to the popularity of the keyword.

Try looking for similar sites to your own and viewing the source code. This will give you ideas for keywords that your competitors are using. Viewing the source code is easy, just right click the mouse somewhere on the page and click on view source.

A good idea is to open a file in wordpad or other text editor and call it "keywords" then if you find words or phrases relevant to your site copy and paste them into your file. You can then view them offline and even print the page out to study it. This can give you ideas for keywords you may not have thought of.

When you have made a list of keywords relevant to each page you will then need to check the supply and demand if you want an edge over your competitor.

You will already know the demand of each keyword the next thing you need to do is to take a sheet of paper or use a spreadsheet on the computer and make 3 columns naming them keyword, supply, and demand.

In the first column list the keywords that have the highest demand. Then in the supply column type how many times it has been searched for.

Lastly in http://www.Altavista.com or http://www.Google.com type in your keyword surrounded by quotation marks like this "stiletto shoes" and see how many sites come up. They will list the number of sites with that keyword in it.

Go through your list, and see how many have a large demand and lower supply. Of course the idea is to have as many large demand and low supply keywords as possible.

Optimise your site by creating theme based,keyword focused pages for each category of shoes or whatever it is that you are selling.

This will greatly increase your chances of getting a higher ranking in the search engines.

Just concentrate on a couple of keywords in each page.

The title meta tag

The title tag is THE most important part of your webpage. It must appeal to the search engines and also the visitor to your site. The title of your page is used as the link to your site by the search engines and is visible to the reader.

Use your most important keywords in the title. Make the title between 15-20 words in length.

The title must be compelling for people to want to click through to your site.

Don’t ever make the mistake of leaving the title tag blank.

Not a good idea if you want an edge over your competition!!

Every page on your site must have a keyword focused title.

The description meta tag

The description tag is also very important and some search engines display it as a summary of your site. Use some important keywords here but don’t repeat them more than 3 or 4 times as it could be seen as spamming.

Keyword tag.

This tag is not as important to search engines as it once was, but you should still use it to list your keywords.

The alt tag

This tag is used to describe images and is useful to the visually impaired.

If an image takes a long time to load the alt tag will appear first.

Add keywords to this tag as part of the description.

The main body of text

Place emphasis on your keywords in the first paragraph of the main text, and repeat them several times in the rest of the page. As each page is theme based the keywords will be relevant,and will appear naturally in the body of the text.

You will greatly increase your chances of getting your site in the top positions of search engines if you follow these ideas.

You must however regularly register all your pages with each of the main search engines to make sure the pages are still there as they can suddenly disappear, or drop down from a number 1 position to number 201!!

Normally about once a month is enough.

You can use a site submitter to make this a lot easier.

A good one that I use is http://selfpromotion.com or another one is http://www.submit-it.com

About The Author

Kathy is an artist and webdesigner for small businesses. She has designed sites for other artists to showcase their work, and has her own online business. Kathy has written several articles on promoting an online business. Visit her site at http://www.healthandbeautytowealth.co.uk.

healthytowealth@aol.com

Imagine that you have a $25,000 marketing budget for your online weight loss herbal supplement business. Should you invest it in trying to build a site to rank #1 in Google for "weight loss?" NO.

What would be the point? To get tons of traffic? Maybe. But people searching on "weight loss" could be looking for everything from weight loss diet books… to weight loss prescription drugs… to scientific studies on weight loss in middle aged men… to weight loss as a symptom of a rare blood disease. Do you really care about getting ALL those untargeted visitors to your site? Are they ALL good prospects for your supplements? NO.

So before you spend one single penny - or one minute -building your web site, find out what the low competition search phrases are for your particular product. It doesn’t matter whether you are an affiliate selling someone else’s product, or marketing your own proprietary supplements. Do your keyword research BEFORE, not after you’ve built your site.

Avoid setting an impossible goal, such as being #1 in Google for a general term like "weight loss." Isn’t it wiser - and easier on you - to invest $1,000 building a site filled with specialized pages, each of which revolves around ONE highly targeted keyword like "over 40 woman’s herbal weight loss"?

As Sean Burns explains in his book, Rankings Revealed, think about the business goals of your site. Strive to be successful with 50 highly focused pages, each of which ranks high for a single phrase. Don’t build 200 pages that are trying to push you to the top for a general term that won’t bring you much real business anyway.

Keyword research and targeted pages are a smarter investment than hundreds of doorway pages that may get banned tomorrow. With the techniques we teach at DominateSearchEngines, you can build key word-targeted pages that are actually useful to your visitors. But you have to know which keywords to focus on FIRST.

There are many free and low-cost tools for finding low competition search phrases. Visit http://www.content.overture.eom/d/USm/ac/index.1html and click "Search Term Suggestion Tool". But whatever tool you choose, go for search terms that are highly specific, relevant to your product, and have less competition than the generic terms.

Pinpoint targeting and low competition means higher rankings - with less investment of time, effort, and money.

You must also be sure that your targeted search term is included in the right places in the HTML. It should appear in your Title, Description, your HI, H2, your first line of text, once or twice in each paragraph, once in bold, once in italic, and in some of your links. Don’t know what I’m talking about? It’s time to learn - just like you have to learn to use a saw, screws, nails, drill and glue to build a bookshelf.

Let’s review that again - Here are the places your targeted keyword needs to be placed if you ever want a chance at #1 ranking:

The Title of the page
The Description META tag
The Keyword META tag In your headline - Use the < hl > or< h2 > tag
Your first line of text Once or Twice in each paragraph
Once in bold
Once in italics
And, finally, in some links…

Amazingly, many people disdain these simple rules as trying to "trick" the search engines. But they are wrong. Including your targeted search term in the right places is actually being POLITE to the search engines. It helps the spider decide whether your site is relevant for a given search.

If your page is about "Atkins diet meal plans for women," wouldn’t it be logical for those words to be in your Title, your Description, your Headlines, your links, and your text? The only reason they wouldn’t be is if your site is about something else! That’s how the spiders think. So should you. Be smarter than your competitors. Simplify your site’s HTML and use it well.

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Kusuma Widjaja is President of Yahoo Cyber Technology, CV., based in Surabaya. He has over 2 years experience in Internet Marketing Arena, Custom Web Site Design and Graphic Design Services. For more information go to http://www.whycity.net or you can reach us at +62-8315-838474.

Keywords are the most important decisions an SEO must make when starting out. Choosing the right keywords will determine the overall SEO strategy and can make all the difference, saving both time and expense in the campaign.

The core of most Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, work is good planning. Virtually all future efforts will be based on the initial choices made about goals and strategies. Chief amongst these choices is that of keywords. The keywords chosen will determine how much of a struggle the SEO efforts will take and what kind of strategy will be used. This is why careful analysis is required in the choice of keywords. Choose poorly and the consequences in terms of time and money can be steep.

Building The List

The keyword choice process is one of elimination. The first step is the easiest, brainstorming as many candidate keywords as possible. The hard part is taking that big list and picking out the truly worthwhile entries. When brainstorming, think in the broadest terms possible about the products, services, and industry in which the business operates. The object is to create a very broad list, as it will be more likely to contain the terms best suited to the overall SEO strategy chosen.

Process of Elimination

With the list prepared, it is time to start eliminating choices. Keep in mind the following basic SEO rules when doing this. First, any one page, including your website’s homepage, can only be effectively optimized for 2-3 keywords or keyphrases. This number can be higher, but that depends on the use of fairly obscure keywords and phrases. Though not usually ideal, one should not entirely discount obscure words and phrases. They can be useful and will be touched upon later. With a 2-3 max in mind, make a short list of what is considered "ideal" in terms of the business or products being offered. One can always optimize internal pages for additional terms if the homepage cannot support all the most highly prized keywords.

Doing The Homework

Research the chosen keywords. This can be accomplished through a variety of ways. First, and most rudimentary, check them in the search engines. View the listings and get a feel for the "competition." Some keywords are more hotly contested than others, though, and this might not be apparent by a mere glance at the results. This is where some deeper analysis is warranted. Various tools exist to gauge the popularity of keywords. Most well known is, perhaps, "Wordtracker.com", a keyword analysis tool that requires a monthly fee to use. Many marketers consider its information invaluable, though, providing a good idea of how many people are likely to be searching on a particular keyword or keyphrase. As a general rule of thumb, the more searches, the more competitive it may be. Alternatively the Overture Keyword Selector Tool provides similar information at no charge. Both tools are also useful as suggestion tools, as they will provide a list of related searches that might provide more valuable keywords than were already chosen.

Two Strategies

The data from Wordtracker or Overture, or both, will provide an good idea how much effort will be required to appear in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for a particular keyword or phrase. The more searches, the likely more competitive. More general searches are more common, and these can be the hardest to successfully optimize. This is where more obscure terms and phrases can be useful. Depending on the business or products being sold, some kinds of more obscure phrases can be very useful.

For instance, someone searching on "cars" could have any number of reasons for doing so. "Cars" is very popular term, and trying to optimize for it would require a great deal of time and money. Whereas someone searching for a particular type of car, or, better yet, a particular type of car in a certain area, is far more likely to be looking to buy that kind of car. There will also be far fewer people doing that search than for "cars", perhaps making it easier to optimize a site or product page for that keyword instead. The traffic from the specific, individual search is also far more highly targeted and far more likely to click through and make a purchase.

It is important not to lose sight of the purpose of the SEO campaign, that of driving potential customers to the business’s website so they will purchase a product or service. Optimizing for very broad, general terms can drive large amounts of traffic if successful, but a far smaller percentage of that traffic is likely to buy. Optimizing for more targeted keywords might not bring as much traffic, but that traffic is more likely to make a purchase. Finding the right balance is important. For some companies, the broad, large amount of traffic may still be preferable and create more sales than the smaller, targeted traffic.

Conclusions

Keyword choice is one of the most important to be made in SEO. What keywords are chosen will determine whether the overall strategy is broad and directed at a large amount of traffic, or small and directed at smaller, more targeted audiences. Each has their merits, though one will generally be more expensive than the other. Always research keywords and know their value before proceeding. Optimizing for poorly chosen keywords is a mistake that takes a lot of time to overcome.

About the Author:

Mr. Lester has served for 4 years as the webmaster for ApolloHosting.com and previously worked in the IT industry an additional 5 years, acquiring knowledge of hosting, design, and search engine optimization. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting, ecommerce hosting, vps hosting, and web design services to a wide range of customers.

Established in 1999, Apollo prides itself on the highest levels of customer support.

Note: These articles are provided for general interest and content purposes only, and should not be construed as "support" materials. Apollo Hosting does not guarantee the information contained within. All articles are free to reprint so long as they remain unchanged, the "About the Author" section remains, all hyperlinks are preserved, and the rel="nofollow" tag is not added to the hyperlinks.

Once the darlings of the search engine spider, the influence of Meta tags vanished completely. This article discusses why and whether they may be making a very weak "comeback."

Meta tags, specifically the "keyword" and "description" tags, are designed to provide quick, thumbnail sketches of a web page’s content in order to better classify it. At one time, the meta tags were a key factor in on-page optimization for almost all search engines. That "one time" was around the late 90’s. It soon became apparent that a reliance on these tags could be exploited, and exploited it was. Today, after the "fall" of the meta tag, they are making a partial comeback as very low-weight on-page optimization factor.

The influence of the meta tag, especially the keywords, faded away once most major search engines either dropped them entirely from consideration in their algorithms or greatly reduced their weight. This happened in response to the vast amount of meta-spamming that took place once their power was initially discovered. Techniques we all recognize today as blatant keyword spamming were commonplace. Webmasters added completely irrelevant, but highly searched terms (particularly "adult" terms) to a site’s meta tags, usually in concert with similar hidden text blocks. These techniques were done only to drive traffic to their sites, highly untargeted and generally unrelated traffic, but traffic nonetheless.

Search engines responded to the problem once they realized their results were no longer relevant. It seems Google completely ignored the meta keywords in response to the blatant spaming. The fall of the meta tags gave rise to a still strong trend today, that of on page text analysis for keywords. Instead of blindly looking at the meta tags to classify a page, search engines turned to the actual content of the page. Text in paragraphs and titles rose to importance, as well as other indicators like text in "alt" tags from images. These factors produced better results for the people using search engines. In theory, the meta tags were a simple, easy way for people to help search engines classify and rank their pages. In practice they were highly abused, as the commodity the search engines provided became very important, especially to the budding ecommerce community.

Today meta tags may be making a quiet comeback. Years have passed since the blatant, irrelevant spamming that caused them to be so thoroughly discredited. With penalties in place, search engines have a way to punish those who would use such techniques. Wise, conservative use of your meta keywords and description tags can only be beneficial. Today the meta description tag sometimes serves as the small page sample Google uses on its result pages.

Like anything concerning search engine optimization, especially Google search engine optimization, make sure your meta tags appear to be as "natural" and "people friendly" as possible. If your description is just a word-for-word rehash of your keywords, that will not look natural, and may be a red flag to a search engine spider. Write out an actual description that a person would be able to read and understand. Use your keywords in the description, but don’t repeat them. A single sentence or phrase should suffice, 2 at the most. The description is not a place to put a summary paragraph. The more words your description has the more watered down it becomes to the search engine.

Advice on the meta keyword tag varies a lot, but concentrate on your core keywords/keyphrases, placing the most important ones first and moving through to the least important. Don’t use 50 keywords, even if you believe your site does, in fact, address all 50 in perfect detail. Keep the list short, and focused. Twenty is a good maximum, and only if you feel you absolutely must target all 20 keywords. Remember, its difficult to very effectively optimize a single page for more than 2 or perhaps 3 keywords. If you have a large number of them, then consider spreading your optimization efforts out across internal pages for certain topics. You can make these into "landing pages" that are specifically optimized for your secondary keywords. Note I said "landing pages" and not "doorway pages". Doorway pages imply pages targeted to a specific search engine that generally employ spamming techniques. A landing page is a natural part of your existing site, say a section title page, that you perform general on-page optimization on for a subset of your keywords.

Meta keyword and descriptions do not have the power they once did, and they never will. Giving that much weight to such an easily abused page attribute was a mistake the search engines eventually corrected. Today, your keywords and deceptions can provide you some small benefit if they are well crafted and devoid of any spaming techniques. Construct a friendly, natural description and choose your core keywords wisely and your meta tags should help you out, if only a little bit.

About the Author:

Mr. Lester has served for 4 years as the webmaster for ApolloHosting.com and previously worked in the IT industry an additional 5 years, acquiring knowledge of hosting, design, and search engine optimization. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting, ecommerce hosting, vps hosting, and web design services to a wide range of customers.

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Ever see a website that seems to speak a foreign language…in English? We encounter many SEO client websites that rely on buzzwords in the page copy to get the word out about their product. The problem lies with visitors who may not be familiar with those terms. This means optimizing with buzzwords may not be the best way to gain traffic. If your prospective visitors are not searching for those terms, how do they find your website?

Start With The Obvious

You really need to know your industry. Study your prospective visitors–who your target audience is. If your prospective visitors are highly technical and work and talk in "buzzword speak", no problem. But if you also want to attract prospective visitors who may not be immersed in the terminology used in your business, you must compensate by optimizing with a wider array of targeted keywords.

How Do I Find All Those Keywords?

Start researching. Yes, it’s going to take a little work on your part to take a close look at what keywords you may be missing out on. Keep account of prospective website visitors who may use other terms to find your website. Track the keywords used by visitors through your log reports. Most log statistics programs have a report showing the keywords used by searchers to find your website. Using your server logs or log statistics program for keyword information is a good way to get a better picture of how visitors are finding your website. Use Overture’s keyword tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/) or Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) and note the words used on your competitors’ websites. Using these, or similar tools, type in your buzzwords and see what variations come up. Competitor websites may use a slightly different language than you when writing copy for their pages. Visit their websites and learn all you can about how many ways your business can get its message across. Read online articles; visit business newsgroups and forums. Find research information through industry websites and companies that specialize in producing reports about your industry.

Help Search Engine Robots Do Their Job

Search engine robots are just automated programs. Their concept and execution is relatively simple: search engine robots "read" the text on your pages by going through the source code of your web pages. If the majority of the words in your source code text are buzzwords, this is the information that will be taken back to the search engine database.

It’s Obvious (the "DUH" factor)

Ok, so it’s obvious to you what your industry buzzwords are. But don’t discount the simpler versions of those catchy words. Focus also on some lesser used terms and make a list of additional keywords you might be able to add. Clear, precise copy that catches the visitor’s attention and tells your story is generally more effective in the long run.

Compromise - Mix SEO Keywords and Buzzwords

You don’t want to change the copy on your webpages? This is often a problem with business websites. Once you have your keyword list of other-than-obvious words, work at fitting them into the page text carefully. You want them to make sense with the context of the web page. Use these new keywords as many times as "makes sense" so they do not sound spammy. Read your copy out loud or have a colleague read your copy to get a sense of how it might sound to a website visitor.

The Bottom Line

It should be easy enough to see how those extra keywords are producing for you. Keep track of your log reports and see if those new terms start showing up in your reports. Test a variety of keywords, then test again to see if visitors are staying on your website, moving through your individual web pages, or clicking away. Create specific pages using those keywords as a test scenario. The information you need should be available to you in your log statistics reports for visited web pages.

Don’t let business jargon get in the way of getting your message across to your audience. Yes, buzzwords may sound cutting edge, but the bottom line is, traffic and sales are what you really want to show for your hard work.

Copyright © 2003 Search Innovation Marketing. http://www.searchinnovation.com - All Rights Reserved.

Permission to reprint this article is granted as long as all text above this line is included in its entirety. We would also appreciate your notifying us when you reprint it: please send a note to reprint@searchinnovation.com.

About The Author

Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing (http://www.searchinnovation.com), a Search Engine Promotion company serving small businesses. She has specialized in search engine optimization since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O’Reilly & Associates, a technical book publishing company.

We have all read lots of articles on how to gather keywords, how to compile a huge keyword list, how to make these keywords relevant to our web site. But exactly what do we do with all these keywords once we have them?

Knowing where and how you can use your keywords will greatly improve the efficiency of your search engine optimization.

There are 5 places in a web page where you can use keywords:

The Title Tag The Keyword Meta Tag The Description Meta Tag Alt Tags for images Body copy on the page

Of these the page Body Copy, the readable text on the page, is the single most important place for your keywords. More about this later.

Let’s first take a look at the Title Tag. This is one of the tags in the head section of the html code of your web page and lists the title that is displayed in the web browser. For instance, Internet Explorer displays this tag in the top bar of the browser window. But there are other uses for the Title Tag as well. Most search engines will index this tag for information about your site and many search engines will use this tag as the title of your listing.

In general you can use from 60 to 115 characters in a Title Tag. The Tag can include the company name, especially if it is a well known company, and should include your most important keywords. Consider this a short description of your web page. One more thing, the Title Tag is also used as the link when the URL is saved into a web browser favorites list.

The Keyword Meta Tag used to be the main way search engines indexed your page. Now-a-days many search engines will simply ignore this tag, but that may not always stay the case. Some search engines still take s look at this tag to help categorize your site. There is no reason not to have this tag on your page, just in case. You are not penalized for including a Keyword Meta Tag.

The keywords should be separated by a comma. Put more specific keywords first then put the less important and general keywords later on. Search engines no longer pay attention to the case of a keyword, so the keywords can all be lower case. I have seen recommendations of 25 keywords or 1000 characters in the list. In general Keyword pairs or triplets are better than single keywords. I try to have one or two lines of keywords if I use this tag.

The Description Meta Tag is slowly joining the Keywords Meta Tag on the lack of support list. But right now it is still a valuable place to use your keywords. Many search engines will look at the description Meta tag for keywords to compare against your body copy. Yahoo goes one step further and will use your description tag as the description of your site in their listings.

Consider the description tag just like it is named, a concise description of your site. Keep it to a short paragraph, under 50 words.

Alt tags are text descriptions that are included with the code used to display images on a page. Basically an Alt tag is the Alternate Text version of the image in case the image is not displayed. Alt tags are important for creating a fully accessible site for people who use screen reader technology that reads the page out loud through their computer speakers. Obviously an image cannot be read aloud, but the Alt tag can.

Alt tags are also displayed as a quick popup when you “hover” your mouse pointer over an image. Many search engines, including Google, will index the Alt tags along with the rest of the body copy, making these ideal places to slip in a few more keywords. Just keep in mind that the text should accurately reflect the content of the image. Plus don’t use Alt tags on images that would not normally be read out loud, such as separator lines or bullets.

This brings us to the main place to use your keywords, the body copy on the page, the text that your visitors are reading when they visit your site. The major search engines will no longer give you a top placement just for having the most instances of a particular keyword on your page. They will give top listing to what they believe is the most relevant page on a topic.

Your job is to work your keyword into the text frequently, but appropriately. Select one or two keywords and make the page specifically about those keywords. Think of yourself giving a PowerPoint presentation to an audience of your best customers. Your PowerPoint slides will be your paragraphs. They should be concise and to the point, using your keywords to drive home your point. And, just like in a PowerPoint presentation, you can use bulleted lists to call out the several benefits of your site or product, each time relating it to your selected keyword.

So use your keywords appropriately on your site and use them where you can. This will greatly increase your search engine effectiveness.

George Peirson is the CEO of How To Gurus. He is the author of over 30 multimedia based tutorial training titles. To see training sets and other articles by George Peirson visit http://www.howtogurus.com Article copyright 2005 George Peirson

Keyword can be classified into three categories :

-Single word Keyword

-Multiple word Keyword

-Keywords based on Theme

Keyword(s) are basic raw material used in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Keyword selection or Keyword Research as it is called technically, where in we use special tools to find out a list of Keywords (search terms) searched by targeted audience, is one of the most important step in SEO. Keyword can be single word, two or three words, multiple words and theme based.

Lets detail each of these one by one . Understanding these categories of keywords would also help one to decide as to their targeting on specific pages.

Keyword of Single word

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Keyword of Single word is used to target a large traffic but leads to highly competition category of sites. Keyword of Single word are known as generic Keyword(s) where we target general audience. Keyword of Single word does not help to target a specific page for a specific audience.

Although, Keyword of Single word helps in bringing huge traffic but these terms are mostly not relevant these days, as, searchers mostly use two or three keyword to find out their required information.

Instead single word keywords are good theme keywords.

We can use these primary keyword 5 to 7 times in a web page for good theming according of a site. The inside pages of the site can qualify these themes into product or service categories by adding qualifiers to these theming keywords.

Example:

Keyword “Services” will produce result of all the web sites related to Services which can be United States Department of Health and Human Services, The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services, direct Services, online Services, offline Services, Indian Services, American Services, food Services, agricultural Services, business Services, free Services, paid Services, etc.

Keyword of Multiple words

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Keyword of Multiple words is used to target a specific traffic, which leads to high sale, top position in search result listing as well as improves page rank competition. Keyword of Multiple words are known as Specific Keyword(s) where we target a specific audience & not general searcher. Keyword of Multiple words helps to target a specific page for a specific audience.

Keyword of Multiple words, more often than not are location specific and related to geographic area of your intended services or products.

Keywords based on Theme

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Keyword based on Theme are used to target a highly targeted audience, which leads to quick high sale, top position in search result listing as well as boosts page rank. Keywords based on Theme are known as Conceptual Keyword(s).

Keywords based on Theme consists all possible primary Keywords related to the web site therefore attracts high traffic of targeted audience. Keywords based on Theme add quality by providing Keyword Rich Text to search engines, which improve results and provide targeted search result listings.

Keywords based on Theme are used in each page of web site to focus on a specific topic correlated to a targeted topic or idea (theme). Keywords based on Theme effectively contribute in growth of informative pages for its site focusing on different related topics.

Keywords Targeting Strategy

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Keywords Targeting Strategy is a tactic, which guides in placing primary keywords like Keyword of Single word, Keyword of Multiple words and Keyword based on Theme according to their importance for successful optimizations of the site.

I’m an Online Marketing consultant at Mosaic Services- a SEO Company. I regularly write and submit articles on various SE specific topics.

To find more articles, please visit my site http://sem.mosaic-service.com