meta tags « Christopher Ross

Posts Tagged ‘meta tags’

25
Aug
2009

Top Five Myths of SEO

Here’s my list of the top five myths of SEO and some suggestions for how to work past them.

Meta Tags are Dead

There’s absolutely no proof that major search engines ignore META data, in fact my experience is that well used meta tags are almost always rewarded while horrible meta tags are almost always punished. Make sure that the meta tags you use on each page are specific to that specific content and relevant.

Multiple Domain Names Help Your Business

There’s some truth to this rumor but only if you use them right (Marketing With Sub Domains and Other Neat Tricks). If your business has 100 domain names and they all reproduce the same content, you’ll actually hurt yourself because Google will confuse content as repetitive. Instead, install a copy of WordPress MU (multiuser) and host 100 completely different websites, each with valuable information and resources specific to those domain names or redirect your domain names using .htaccess level redirects to tell Google your domain is pointing to another.

Doorway Pages Help Your Ranking

This is a big one, but it’s completely untrue! Doorway pages are special pages designed as landing pages which are specifically programmed to appeal to visitors but more importantly override major search engines understand of what your website is all about. Doorway pages are only linked from external websites and use a series of ‘black hat SEO’ techniques to override the search engines …. why doesn’t it work? Simple, major search engines such as Google hate being tricked. Remember, Google isn’t a company it’s a culture and the people who make up that culture want to be the best search engine in the world. If they believe you’re lying to them, they’ll kick you off their search engine.

Search Engine Friendly URL’s are Critical

No so fast, they make look great and even show up highlighted in result pages but there’s no concrete evidence to suggest making your URL’s pretty vs. database generated strings has any impact on your rankings at all. In fact, Matt Cutt’s (Google’s voice to the people and all around SEO guru) makes it clear that Google’s smart enough to ignore SEO friendly URL’s. So should you stop using them? Not a chance, they don’t hurt and they make the site easier for people to use.

SEO is a One Time Fix

Hiring a reputable SEO consultant isn’t a one time fix, there are many aspects to building a great search engine ranking and it takes time, effort and patients.

Tags: best search engine, black hat, Concrete Evidence, domain names, Doorway Pages, External Websites, google, major search engines, Meta Data, meta tags, Multiuser, Myths, neat tricks, Proof, Right Marketing, Search Engine Search, seo, Truth
Posted in Blogging, Business Advice, Make Money Online, Web Site Advice

02
Mar
2009

Vertical Measures

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As some of you already know, I do a little bit of SEO work for clients but my main business is actually as a technology consultant, not link building. I personally believe that when it comes to building your websites links it’s best to call in an expert which is why, although I’m very good at it I don’t proclaim to actually be one.

One of the sources that I do turn to when I need link building experts is Vertical Measures. They run a pretty informative blog on seo link building so it’s no surprise that I have their site as part of my own personal RSS feed, recently they’ve completed a few great articles which should be able to help most small business owners:

Yes, Meta Tags ARE Important!
Brands In Search Results, Matt Cutts Sheds Some Light (a piece about Matt Cutts tutorials)
A Powerful Reason to get Ranked on Google!

Hiring a link building company is just like hiring a search engine optimization firm, you need to take the time to understand what they’re going to do for you and also to discover that many of the top improvement strategies are things you can easily do yourself if you’re facing a limited budget.

Tags: blog, budget, google, improvement strategies, little bit, matt cutts, measures, meta tags, Search Engine Optimization, search engine optimization firm, small business owners, surprise, technology consultant
Posted in Marketing Advice

10
Oct
2008

Meta Tags that Kill Your Blog

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There is nothing worse then when I come across a great blog by accident and find the owner killing their own SEO values by using bad Meta tags. Some SEO experts will tell you that meta tags are useless but that’s not true, they’re simply not as powerful (for good) as they used to be. On the other hand, they still seem to be capable of crippling a blog in a heartbeat if you use them wrong.

meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”

OK, a robot tag is a good thing but the robot tag above specifically tells Google to piss off. Seriosly, what this translates to in English is “Robots, please do not index this page or follow any links on it”. Blogs are public, get over it.

meta name=”description” content=”web design,web,design,designer,websites,websites, web html”

This is bad for so many, many reasons. Look, the description tag is meant to be used for describing your website or the content of the page. Keyword stuffing will not get spiders to like you, in fact it will most often result in them punishing you.

meta name=”keywords” content=”web design,web,design,designer,websites,websites, web html”

Ditto for the keywords, nothing says SPAM faster than keyword stuffing. If you want proper links from Google, use your content to generate descriptions, titles and keywords that will help Google understand your site.

Tags: blog, Content Web, Design Web Design, Designer Websites, Ditto, google, Heartbeat, Meta Content, meta description, Meta Keywords, Meta Name, meta tags, Piss, robot, robots, seo, Seo Experts, Spiders, Web Design Web, web designer, Web Html
Posted in Web Site Advice

24
Oct
2006

Does the Meta tag still matter?

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There’s been a lot of talk on the web of late and most of it isn’t good for the META tag … it seems some people think poor old META is dead but personally, I think META is going to stick around for a lot longer than people think.

Here’s the thing (for non webbies), a META tag is a special series of instructions, found on almost every web page on the Internet and what they do (or are meant to do) is tell search engines such as Google what your website has on it.

In the old days, major search engines used to use spiders to crawl the web and find pages, they would then pick up the META data and display it on their search engine but people quickly began abusing this and posting fake META data, to trick web users into visiting their website.

The more advanced search engines, and most modern engines use a complex series of algorithms to create their own summary of websites, making the META data seem fairly unimportant. After all, if the search engine is going to create its own version of the META data, what possible use will the sites META data be?

Well here’s the kicker, I’ve found that websites I build with great META data continue to be placed high on major search engines, while pages or sites without META data rarely rank well.

My theory (and it’s just a theory) is that if your META tags are accurate, the search engines reward you for being honest but if your META tags make no sense to the search engine, they either reject them or worse, punish your rankings.

As for me, I use a custom build module for my websites, it builds the META data on the fly, based on the actual content of the website, which means that when the search engines come to index, they receive great META data based on actual content, not just what I thought would look good at the time.

This article first appeared on my old website in 2006 but was recently recovered from my old archives.

Tags: advice, algorithms, fly, google, Kicker, major search engines, meta, Meta Data, Meta Tag, meta tags, search engine, Search Google, Search Pages, Search People, Spiders, Web Page, web pages, Web Users, Webbies
Posted in Web Site Advice