SEO Advice

[Brightstar]

Strange

Hi,

Yet another strange thing is happening in that the meta description which is shown for my website, for the search term in Google - 'masonic regalia' (and other search terms) is displaying a description I have not used for at least 6-8 months?

I have gone through V11 with a fine tooth comb, and cannot find this text anywhere within the site.

The current meta description should read -

'Suppliers of Quality Masonic Regalia, Masonic Books, Masonic Gifts and Accessories. Acacia Masonic Supplies, United Kingdom'

I have checked and re-submiited my .xml sitemap to Google thorugh Webmaster Tools.

Has anyone any idea why Google is displaying it this way please?

[leehack]

In site options there is an option for them to inherit from the parent meta tags, perhaps that has changed?

[Brightstar]

Hi Lee,

Thanks for replying.

I take it you mean SITE OPTIONS/LINKS/INCLUDE PARENT META CONTENT IN EACH SECTION ?

That was TRUE now set to FALSE

[leehack]

That's the one.

[Brightstar]

Hi

I have just been looking at one of my competitors website, which has been re-designed and was launched about 6 months ago.

It has shot up the Google rankings quite quickly.

Take a look at the page source - in particular, what they have done with the keywords meta-tag. Surely, that's not good practice is it - is that spamming keywords?

The URL is : http://www.thetoyeshop.com/masonic-regalia.html

As usual any comments appreciated

[pinbrook]

AFAIK google completely ignores meta keyword tag.

[Duncan Rounding]

With that sort of keyword spamming I expect their visit to the 'top' may be short lived anyway.

[leehack]

Very sporting of you to improve their SEO by providing a link to their site. I suspect they're achieving what they are in spite of the keywords, not because of them.

[Mike Hughes]

I'd ignore the keywords spam. That is unlikely to be the reason they're doing well. Others have tested keywords and reached the conclusion that Google ignores them. Logically they appear to me to be a useful signal to a search engine, even if easily spammed, so I'm not convined they're ignored completely

But they are doing most things better than you for the term 'masonic regalia'

- On term url with keywords in the pagename.
- Higher Pagerank (3) versus your page (2)
- Exact match H1 phrase
- I haven't looked at their anchor text but would suspect its good*
- Better Siloing (on topic links out).
- Repeats the search term in the page title and description. (I'm not a great fan of this as it's not great for the user viewing the SERPS but it does appear to work from an SEO perpective).

A new design will typically lead to a SERPS boost until Google's more detailed, longer term algorithms kick in and make appropriate adjustments. On the whole though, there's little reason I can see why your competitor shouldn't do well in the rankings.

Mike

* Yahoo site explorer has now become Bing Webmaster Tools which requires you to verify site ownership which is a PITA as site explorer was a useful tool for looking at site links.

[Chunkford]

Keywords meta is ignored by Google and yahoo but is a signal for Bing, albeit a very small one.
Personally I wouldn't bother with it and spend your time on other, more meaningful areas.

BTW, you have a list of keywords you can check out that's all ready made for you now

[brucet]

Here's the official Google line on Meta Keywords: http://bit.ly/ubxSM

[Mike Hughes]

OK. Pretty convincing.

We went ahead and did this post on the official Google webmaster blog to make it super official, but I wanted to echo the point here as well: Google does not use the keywords meta tag in our web search.

Still, there is a little get out clause at the end of that statement from 2009.

Google uses over two hundred signals in our web search rankings, but the keywords meta tag is not currently one of them, and I don’t believe it will be.

So, OK. Google have made it clear (and official) that they don't use keywords meta tags and there seems little interest in changing this.

Fair to say that I am now convinced that Google don't use the keywords meta tags.

But others search engines do, so I'd still suggest using them for relevant keywords. But clearly spamming them is a bad idea.

Mike