I had a chat today with someone about the basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). He just can’t get his two websites to show up in any of Google’s results so where is he going wrong?
If you have read on the internet (or in a book) that one of the tasks to undertake is to add META keywords to your website pages then you are reading a guide that is perhaps 15 years out of date (example below)…
<META NAME=”KEYWORDS” CONTENT=”Mac, pc, consultancy, support, management, maintenance, installation, networking, FileMaker, Windows, SBS, Vista”>
KEYWORDS meta tags don’t help. (Don’t confuse this with the DESCRIPTION meta tag which does have some value).
The basics of SEO revolve around three things:
- Your content needs to contain the words you want to be ranked for,
- Although bear in mind that other people might be searching using different keywords,
- Your keywords should be in a headline or page title near the top of the page (preferably inside ‘H1′ tags) and included in the title text (that appears at the top of the browser window). They should also be in the clickable text of any links that point to this web page.
It can help a lot if other websites can link to your website using these keywords too. It’s also easier with websites that have more pages because there are more opportunities to insert links to different pages. This is why blogs are a popular SEO tactic, which is fine if you have something to say…
How to get found on Google is another post I wrote on the subject (using plumbers/carpenters/tradesmen as an example).
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Ten days later, Matt Cutts at Google posted on his blog Google doesn’t use the keywords meta tag in web search. So there, you’ve heard it from the horse’s mouth too!
If you’re getting into SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), browse Matt Cutts’ blog – lots of easy to digest tips there.