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Keyword Voodoo! Invisible Metatag Mumbo Jumbo |
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by Mike Banks Valentine copyright
© 2003
Search Engine Optimization clients often ask about secret
keywords as if there is some sort of Keyword Voodoo
that only Search engine optimization specialists understand.
Rather than simply using keywords liberally in page
text, web site owners seem to believe if they use them
in thos invisible meta tags, that it will improve their
ranking for keywords that aren't on the visible part
of the page.
Clients attempt to use site-wide keywords that reference
all the products they sell from every page on the site!
This widely misunderstood tactic actually hurts ranking
rather than helping it. Here's an easy rule of thumb.
If the keyword isn't in the page body text in the single
page you are looking at, don't use it in any meta tags.
If you feel you must use the keyword in meta tags, then
you must also insert it into the visible page text.
Not into images or their alt tags, not in title attributes,
not in directory names or image names, IN BODY TEXT.
If you ignore this recommendation, you dilute relevance
of any keywords that ARE in body text. Start on the
page!
Clients get caught up in arcane minutia of SEO worrying
over details that they don't understand, taken out of
context from articles they've seen or arguments they've
read in discussion lists. A litany of questions ensues.
Am I better off with generic keywords or brand specific
keywords? Do I make special landing pages with targeted
keyword phrases, or better yet, keyword domains focusing
only on specific keywords? Do I put my best keywords
all over the page or put them at the top for more relevance?
Should I use those important keyword phrases in a title
tags even if they aren't on the page? How about comment
tags, alt text tags, noframes tags, and noscript tags?
If you insist on believing in meta tag voodoo, I suggest
that you concentrate on the no voodoo meta tag. <novoodoo>
For those of you who actually want to rank well in the
search engines for your important keyword phrases, and
who don't want to spend time burning candles, chanting
incantations and poking keyword pins into voodoo dolls,
I suggest you learn the simplest of all SEO rules.
Put your keywords in the text on your web page! If the
keywords aren't already included within the body text
of your web site in sufficient density, then it won't
matter what HTML tags you use or where you put them.
Often clients react with intense surprise when I tell
them that the keywords they are targeting are nowhere
to be found on their home page and we need to add them.
One surprised site owner pointed to the graphic images
across the top and bottom of their pages where keyword
phrases loomed in giant stylized type across the page.
They asked about the menu bar along the left of their
site template, "You know, those that change color
as you hover your mouse over them?" Sorry, those
are images. The solution is NOT in the images with words
painted on them by fancy graphics programs, but in real
body text.
Heres a quick test I recommend to clients. Visit
your site home page online. Go to the browser menu,
choose "Edit" and then "Select All".
This highlights all text on the page. Then go again
to the browser menu, again choose "Edit" then
click on "Copy", which will copy that highlighted
text to your clipboard. Now open up Notepad from your
Windows "Start" menu by choosing the "Programs",
then "Accessories" and finally "Notepad".
When the blank page of Notepad text editor opens, paste
the text you've copied from your page into it by going
to the Notepad menu bar, choosing "Edit" then
"Paste".
Many who don't do their own design work are startled
by how few words of text actually appear when doing
this little test. This serves as a wake-up call when
they experience this demonstration and begin to come
to an understanding that this text is all the search
engines see, or care about.
This text shows clearly that not everything that you
can see on the page is actual text. Much of it is made
up of images with stylized text painted on to them by
a graphics program. What you see on that Notepad page
now is your visible body text. That text that you now
have in front of you is all that matters to the search
engines. They don't care about the images or invisible
Voodoo meta tags.
Even then, surprised clients blurt, "We included
those keywords in the invisible HTML code on the page
lots of times in special (Voodoo) meta tags our developer
used."
Entrepreneurs often hire developers based on stellar
client lists or personal recommendations from partners
or even staff members, but search engine optimization
is rarely understood to be among the skill sets needed
within web design jobs. SEO is done only by specialist
Keyword Voodoo practitioners that come in later to save
site owners from "invisible HTML tags" haunting
their keyword-less pages.
What do SEO's do? Add the keywords to the body text
- FIRST, before anything else is done. There are clearly
additional things we do as well, but the path to highly
ranked web pages is not in the HTML that you CAN'T see,
it is right in the body text of the page in the form
of visible words on the page.
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Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization
specialist practicing ethical small business SEO Search
Engine Placement, Optimization, Marketing http://SearchEngineOptimism.com/SEO_Tutorial/
Website –http://SEOptimism.com/
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