The Meta Tag Myths.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 12-10-2009

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1. Add every meta tag that you can.

Take a look at the code of a few websites out there. Many sites have silly amounts of tags far more than they need. Remember the old adage: keep it simple, stupid. Dont add tags unless you know what youre doing and dont make up your own tag names, because no-ones paying any attention to them. Most of these tags are skipped over by most search engines anyway. The only crucial tags are the description tag and the keywords tag which are both utilized occasionally. Many other tags are there just for the sake of crediting the webmaster, author, etc. These kinds of tags are there mostly for the sake of other webmasters if they need to know who to contact about the page itself.

#2 Have lots of keywords.

Using the keywords meta tag correctly is good, but dont get too hung up on it. Many search engines now ignore it altogether, including Google and AltaVista. Remember that putting too much in this tag could be considered spamming make sure you dont put anything in more than three times, and keep the keywords related to your site. As previously stated, many of your meta tags will be skipped over anyway, but you should keep to your primary key words and not worry too much about assembling a gigantic list. Be descriptive, be honest, dont be excessive.

#3 Keyword lists must have a formula.

People have a tendency to get very distracted by the keyword meta tag you shouldnt misuse it and you definitely shouldnt expect miracles from it. It gets skipped more often than not; even its used it is used in company with the content on your page. If you want to obsess with optimizing something, optimize your content.

#4 The title tag doesn’t really do much.

Out of all the tags, this one is the most important when its used correctly. Just like with your sites content, write your title tag for your audience first and the search engines second. Think about your sites branding and navigation issues as you create your title tags. Your title should be relatively long. A seven to ten word title is not out of the question. The title is the first thing that a search engine really cares about and it should be the most common thing that you want your visitors to find you for. Your most important key words should all be worked into your title.

#5 If I copy my competitor’s keywords I will do just as well.

You need to understand tags and the details of search engine optimization in general. What works for one site doesnt necessarily work for another! You do not have identical sites so you cannot work with identical keywords. Aside from this detail, a site that has been around longer is more likely to have success from its key words than a new site. If you are trying to take over a small niche, you have to expand and do something that your competitor hasnt done yet.

#6 If I repeat my keywords in a comment tag I will rank better.

There was a time long ago when this was true, but it was a really long time ago. Search engines are all wise to this trick nowadays.

#7 We need to have as many different keywords as possible throughout our site

This is an SEO nightmare. Your pages need to be focused, not always trying to cover all basis. Limit your keywords.

#8 Anyone can write a websites tags.

SEO calls for copywriting and marketing talent: writing good tags that can attract both humans and search engine spiders isnt easy.

#9 Google doesn’t rank me by the description tag, so why should I use it?

Google does still use the description tag from your site it displays it to its users in the results. If theres no description tag, theyll just see a nonsense excerpt from your site, which is bad. Dont forget that there are still plenty of uses for the description tag. Make the title and the description complement each other, as they will often be displayed together.

How Google Page Rank Works.

Filed Under (SEO Tips) by admin on 16-09-2009

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A Page Rank is a number Google gives to a web page that represents how important Google thinks the page is on the web. When one page links to another, Google considers it to be effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes there are for a page across the whole web, the more important that page must be. But thats quite an assumption, isnt it?

The importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself really is, meaning in Google calculations a page’s importance comes from the votes cast for it. These votes are then taken into account when the page is ranked.

As a general rule of thumb, Google Page Ranks along with Alexa ratings are the best indicators of how well your SEO work has been going. Granted, the ranking that you appear in on the results for your most important key words is the real indicator, but a strong Google Page Rank will help to boost this position substantially. The more links that you have pointing at your site, the better off you are. Thats a basic rule that will apply throughout your SEO operations.

Page Rank matters because its one of the most influential factors that determine a page’s ranking in Googles search results. If you want to have good Page Rank, youd better make sure people are linking to your site.

Well, dont jump the gun and try to get your site linked from everywhere you can, because Google doesnt count every link. They have started filter out links from known link farms (sites that are nothing but big lists of links), and being linked to or from these kinds of sites will get you penalized by Google. Be careful out there. They have also implemented a new relevance calculator that (true to its name) tries to determine how relevant the links into and out of your site are. The most important factor here is that Google considers long lasting links as more meaningful than a recently published link.

The best way to increase your page rank is to contact people with relevant and complementary content (that is, content that does not compete with your own but that enhances it). These links are most likely to last and they will not only increase your Google Page Rank, but they will also provide relevant hits via the links themselves.

How is PageRank Calculated?

Google calculates the PageRank PR of all pages it indexes, taking into account all the links to and from each site. When a page votes for other pages by linking to them, it shares out some of its PageRank value amongst these pages.

This algorithm means that a link to your site from a page with PR4 (i.e. a Page Rank of 4) and five outbound links would be worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and a hundred outbound links. Its not just the Page Rank of the page thats important, but also the number of links it has.

The more links there are on a page, the less Page Rank value your page receives from them. You should also remember that it takes progressively more Page Rank to move up a level. It is generally pretty easy to achieve a Page Rank of three. Once you achieve a Page Rank of four, your site is getting formidable. Increasing past this mark may prove difficult and will require very important content. Reaching 8+ is very difficult. These ranks are usually reserved for sites that are crucial for the functionality of the internet.

Each time you add a link, or a page that links to you adds a link, you run the risk of lowering your PageRank. Make sure that you have as few links as possible, and so do any sites that are associated with you.

Google repeats its PageRank calculatons many times at each update, and each time the calculation is made it gets more likely to be accurate. Total accuracy can never be achieved, however, because one sites PageRank is entirely relative to the others. You should understand that the results searchers end up with can really only be properly worked out by Google, because theyre the only ones with access to the whole index.