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It's a classic SEO tactic: make sure your meta tag keywords are relevantly and appropriately describing your content. In theory, it makes sense, but a recent revelation from Google might make you second guess the time you're putting into conjuring up those keywords.
InboundMarketing.com's top inbound marketing article goes to show that old habits die hard in the world of SEO...
Author: Patricio Robles of Econsultancy
The revelation, straight from the Google blog itself: Google doesn't even look at the keywords meta tag when ranking websites, the reason being that because it's such an easy tag to abuse, it has no value. For skeptics out there, Patricio confirms that it also doesn't hurt to include meta tags and adds that other search engines might not follow the same rules as Google, making meta tags possibly useful for SEO in those search engines.
Description meta tags, he adds, may have some value, though not in terms of search ranking. Occasionally, Google does use description meta tags as text for Google search snippets, which can be valuable in helping convince users to click when they are used. This video summarizes Google's outlook on meta tags.
Lesson: Old habits die hard.
Author: Alex of MarketingNow
What's in a number? A high Google page rank is coveted in terms of SEO, but what makes it so special? The first half of Alex's article defines page rank, a number used by Google to classify sites by which ones are using relevant keywords and content. The concept is simple: the website with the best Google page rank will benefit more visitors and sales than one with a poor page ranking.
The second half of Alex's article discusses the top ways to achieve a good Google page rank. The most effective technique, link building, is also accompanied by such tips as having sitemaps in XHTML, optimizing website for competitive and non-competitive keywords, article submission with follow links, etc.
Lesson: To get ahead, understand how things work.
Author: Lynton Labs
As many of you may know, links on most social networking sites are "no-follow," meaning the links you leave on these sites don't pass SEO credit, even if you include anchor text. This post by Lynton Labs, however, recognizes a few exceptions to the rule uncovered by SEOmoz, listing some unexpected sites that allow you to squeeze out some of that precious SEO juice.
Among the top sites:
Lesson: There are always exceptions to the rule.
Author: Christina Warren of Mashable
A recent study conducted by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education reveals that 86% of professionals in a variety of fields said they have adopted social media in some way, but it doesn't seem like many understand the value of social media measurement.
Surprisingly, 84% of respondents don't even measure the return on investment (ROI) of the social media programs they're implementing, and many don't even know how to use the tools and services they employ in order to measure it. This Mashable article takes it a step further by emphasizing the dangers of engaging in social media without measuring results.
Lesson: Measurement is an important part of any campaign.
Author: Dr. Pete of SEOmoz
Dr. Pete encourages all of us to see the big picture when it comes to SEO best practices. He advises us against narrowly focusing on one area and instead points us toward seeing the "forest for the trees." His back-to-basics post aims to target both newbies and seasoned SEOs alike by calling out the big picture 4 R's (and offering readers his best tips):
- Robots - get discovered by them
- Ranking - it's the Holy Grail of SEO
- Relevance - ranking is only effective if it drives relevant traffic
- Results - traffic is only valuable if it drives measurable results
Lesson: Always look at the big picture.
Photo by Jesse Yardley
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