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What's interesting though is that none of these optimized pages use Meta Keyword tags nor Meta Description tags. The rest of the pages follow normal SEO principles. Because of good internal linking methodologies, all the pages have a high amount of inbound links with the various keywords in the links.
I realize keyword tags aren't really needed for google but the description one was somewhat important i thought.
I still use them occasionally when I can be bothered. They do help with a few other engines.
That is not true. To test it, put up a brand new site with one page. Use all the on page optimization techniques you know of. Then get just one incoming link.
If it is not a real competitive term you will rank high. This is a direct result of the on page optimization, not the link(s).
I thought it was because of a million anchor text links from their affiliates directly to their product pages.
Google's lack of weighting on good content is a real source of frustration for me. Can you tell!
That is not true. To test it, put up a brand new site with one page. Use all the on page optimization techniques you know of. Then get just one incoming link.
If it is not a real competitive term you will rank high. This is a direct result of the on page optimization, not the link(s).
I think you just contradicted yourself when you said:
"Then get just one incoming link"
On page factors only make a slight difference to current results. Perhaps I've never dabbled in an area with such a low number of result to notice your findings!
I do of course mean internal links as well as external / incoming.
>>>Google only really cares about links!That is not true. To test it, put up a brand new site with one page. Use all the on page optimization techniques you know of. Then get just one incoming link.
If it is not a real competitive term you will rank high. This is a direct result of the on page optimization, not the link(s).
I have to challenge that...I have the direct opposite - a single page (it's a URL forwarding page) with no text I can get access to. And the text that's there has no keywords or anything I could call useful - there's no H1, no title of any worth, no keywords, zilch. Just one sentence.
The on-page optimisation is zero - none, nothing...
But I have plenty of incoming links.
As a result, on my chosen keywords, I rank 1st out of 2.6 million.
Be very careful about generalising from one example!
At least Rugles and I have diametrically opposed examples, so that you're free to pick the one you fancy. Not sure WHICH you should pick, but I'm happy with my choice <grin>
DerekH
If the queried keyword shows up in the meta description - Google will usually show it as your description in the search results.
Often this looks a lot better to the searcher than just some random excerpt out of the page (like your navbar) - and can increase your click-thru rate.
Can't say if it actually helps you rank or not - but I think its worth doing.
I don't usually bother with the keyword meta tag.
I was just trying to show that the incoming links are not the only factor. A thousand good links will trump the on page stuff everyday.
Put both together on the same domain, then you have gold.
Oh, ya. In that example I gave..... the one incoming link is to ensure that g-bot stops by on a regular basis to eat up the spider food.
Google is not the only player in the search space. ;)
Very true - but it is interesting that complete removal of meta seems to have little/no effect...
1. Lets face it when designing a page putting in these 2 tags takes about 0.3% of the total design time, which isn't much effort.
2. You’re future-proofing your pages, so that if one day some new search engine comes along and counts those tags as a factor you don’t have to go back and change all 20 million of your pages.
3. I’ve found that using short tags (4 to 8 words) of your most focused keywords works best for both SEO (for the spiders that do use this data) and for customer CTR since it gets the message across to the customer quickly (nobody likes to read a long description) – of course this is for those SE’s that use the desc tag
So bottom line does it really take a long time to pump out 2 tags with a 4 to 8 word length?
Actually I just did a few searches in my sector/industry and the top 3 in all the searches have meta tags AND 80% of them are short (4 to 8 words).
Anybody else see similar results? Or for that matter different results?
a single page (it's a URL forwarding page) with no text I can get access to. And the text that's there has no keywords or anything I could call useful - there's no H1, no title of any worth, no keywords, zilch. Just one sentence.
The on-page optimisation is zero - none, nothing...But I have plenty of incoming links.
As a result, on my chosen keywords, I rank 1st out of 2.6 million.
Not an accusation, but a question: how relevant is the page searchers wind up at to what they were looking for in the first place?
I have many pages with only a title and no meta tags at all no H1 and no text and they went right to the top of 7.6 M results
Stories like this really make me sad. It makes it possible for someone to create a page/site that misleads users and takes traffic away from resources that are actually spot-on with what people want. I'm not saying the sites in these examples are like this, only that it seems foolish for Google to allow sites that don't contain any content to rank in the SERPS.
When I run a search, my goal is to wind up at sites that have the information I want, and I expect Google to help me by finding those sites and putting the most appropriate and information filled ones at the top of the SERP. That's the whole point. If clicking the number one result takes me to a page with no content, the search is a failure.
Or has this idea, the idea of people actually finding what they're looking for, gone out of fashion?
cEM
So don't get holier than thou before you know the rest of the story.
Meta tags can't hurt, and some engines still make use of them.
Who uses the keyword meta tag?
Utilize your META Description and META Keywords tag as they were intended to be used. Google is not the only player in the search space. ;)
Again - who? It would not make sense for any search engine to pay attention to the meta keyword tag as 99% of them are filled with spam or don't reflect the content of the page properly due to poor keyword research.
Who uses the keyword meta tag?Yahoo do. They use it for match and not rank.
Absolutely. These tags are not ingnored by everyone Is300, just most. Often my desc is picked up by smaller engines and dirs. It is still in your best interest to have these two tags, but don't use WW's home page metas as a guide. :)
So don't get holier than thou before you know the rest of the story.
One, even knowing the rest of the story doesn't change the fact that Google shouldn't list sites with no content in the SERPs. If the site in question contains nothing but images, it should show up on the Google image search results, not the general search results where users expect to find information. Otherwise, what justification is there for an image search page to exist at all?
Two, please note that I indicated, "I'm not saying the sites in these examples are like this." My point was intended to be a general one based off of your post, not an attack on you and your post personally. (I added this disclaimer for the very reason you express in the above quote, i.e., because I didn't know the whole story).
If you took offense, please accept my apology. Without details I would never pass specific judgement on a site or page. I was being critical of the search system that allows content-free sites to rank, not of you and your content-free site that ranks. And I certainly wasn't implying that you did it on purpose, only that it's a 'bad thing' that others can.
Again, my comment was simply that, as a searcher I do not want a SE to send me to pages that do not contain the content I am looking for, in the same way that, as a shopper, I do not want to go into a book store only to find that they're selling prom dresses, or, as a patient, to go to the doctor's office only to have her tell me she's going to set me up with some car insurance instead of a colonoscopy (well, maybe that would be better...)
Of course, it's just an opinion, so salt it to taste.
cEM
Utilize your META Description and META Keywords tag as they were intended to be used. Google is not the only player in the search space. ;)
So true. I have good evidence on one site that the msn search beta is paying attention to Meta. Mind, when I do meta, it always lines up well with the "on page" factors.
I had been doing meta out of a sense of anachronism, (just to be crotchety), but with the msn search results, I've noticed that pages that I've taken the time to do meta, and do it right, they're fairing far better than the ones where I didn't do any meta at all.
(A page in particular that stands out is one where I rank #1 out of 6.5 million for a search term. Which is out of line with what that same page is doing in G).
Right now, I'm going back to take a second look at the whole meta thing. Google might just turn around and start looking at it again, at least in a comparitive sense. If your Meta lines up with your On Page, to me that signals an honest coder. A smarter search engine might take things like that into account. And we all know, the game right now is to build a smarter engine than google.
Google is not the only player in the search space. ;)
or better "Google is not the only player in the Internet space"
Recently received a mail from a company whose name I added by mistake in the Title of a page, since that company name resembled generic name. Interestingly that mail was CCed to spam[at]google.com :)
Mc
The sites i've seen ranking well have plenty of ROS links, but no meta tags, and they rank really well across both yahoo and google for dozens of competitive phrases. hum...... anyone else?
However, if you don't have meta tags, they'd have nothing to compare the link text to and thus they cannot penalize you.
cEM
