Blog Search Engine Optimization Debunking the tag myth
Debunking the tag myth
Written by Jase Clamp Thursday, 13 May 2010 18:13
We just want to come right out with it. Your meta-keywords don't matter a hill of beans to your ranking. Shocking huh?
Tags were big back in 1995 but then people started to put 100s of keywords in their meta-tags to try and shortcut or drive up their rankings. Search engines had so much of it they decided to completely ignore it. Google has never observed keywords and its reported that if they do make a difference in Yahoo, it's miniscule.
So we need to have lots and lots of text right? Page titles, image tags, H1 tags. Sort of. I told a friend today that your content only weighs in at about a 20% importance for your site's search ranking.
We paid a few hundred "quid" (that's English for "dollars") a few months ago to talk to some pretty high ranking SEO specialists. This is what they told us and I was amazed. All of my readings and research in SEO have also confirmed this.
So what does "weigh in?" It's back links.
Now I'm not talking "pay $5 and someone will add you to 100 search engines" backlinks. That is rubbish (thats English for garbage). Its all about reference.
See, if I have a job opening for a designer and I get an application from Joe Blow but then my friend Byron calls me up and says "Jase, I have this guy here who's done great design work in the past, you should check him out, here's his resume." I have a point of reference. Byron has referred his contact to me whereas Joe... I have no context for Joe.
If Google sees 100s of sites legitimately pointing to your site, you must be pretty important. If Google sees 100s (or 1000s) of sites in Inida pointing to your site and those sites have nothing to do with yours and don't have a reason to link to yours then; Google being as smart as they are, will black list you.
One of our client's domains got blacklisted recently when he decided to buy a 1000 cheap links. We suggested he ditch his five year old domain name and start from scratch since he was not going to be able to come back any time soon.
So does WinWorld offer SEO (search enging optimization) services? No. Our reasoning is that, SEO is such a time-consuming field, if we were to do that and do it well, it would have to be all we do. We'd rather stick to web development. We do however find SEO very interesting and do a lot of research on the matter. We'll keep sharing what we find via this blog for those of you who want to D.I.Y., but for those who would like a professional to work on SEO for your site, we have a referal for you.
About a year ago we did a very thorough analysis of about 80 SEO companies. (Yes 80, it took us almost a week to do this). The vendor that rose to the top of our evaluation was Total Impact Marketing (www.360tim.com). We found them to offer the most value for money, with some packages starting at $100/mo. Feel free to tell them we sent you to them.
We'll have more tips and resources coming, but for now, why not stroll over to Search Engine Land and read about 36 SEO Myths that won't die but should.
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