Hi, I have been working on my own site for a couple years now. I was recently contacted by a SEO company who states I am not being found for certain keyword phrases. They sent me an example of the correct title and meta keyword tags I should be using, but, to me, the title doesn’t make much sense – it’s just repeated keywords. And the meta tags have a lot of keywords, some I hadn’t even thought of for my site. As I’m not an expert, maybe I am doing something wrong? Here’s what {company name removed to protect privacy} sent. Can you take a look at my site at {company name removed to protect privacy} and what I was sent and tell me what is right? Either? None? Does it even matter? Hoping you respond!
Thanks,
Theresa J.
Hastings, Michigan
Hi Theresa –
This question has come up before on a few occasions with some of our clients as well. The problem with these emailed Title and Meta solutions is that they’re wrong in a couple of different, yet equally bad ways.
First, stuffing keywords into your Title and Meta tags is a good way to trigger a spam filter. You’re not telling the Search Engines, “Hey, this is what my site is about” – you’re saying, “HEY!!! THIS, THIS, THIS, THIS is what my site is about!!!”. You’re calling the wrong attention to the site when you have these kinds of tags. One part of search engine optimization is to create randomness on purpose. This means you don’t want to leave a breadcrumb trail of your intentions that can be detected by a search engine algorithm. The trail might look something like this: you have a page URL called, “KEYWORD-KEYWORD-KEYWORD.HTML”. You then put “KEYWORD, KEYWORD, KEYWORD” as the Title, the Description and in the Keyword tag. You round it out with, “KEYWORD, KEYWORD, KEYWORD”, as the H1 header. You’ve just made it easy for a search engine to connect the dots – and the next thing you know, you’re out of that engine and wondering what happened. So when you are repeating keywords in your Titles and/or repeating them in your Metas, it’s seen as a purposeful manipulation and repetition of text in an attempt to improve placements. You are sending off alarms to the Search Engines.
Also, with the Title – the other problem is you are losing your audience with the lack of marketed linking text. Even if you were in the Top 10, the likelihood of a click on your site would be less than a site whose linking text actually makes sense to read. A lot of times this additional purpose of the Title is forgotten about; it shouldn’t be. Title tags need to incorporate a keyword phrase or two in such a manner that it is readable and that highlights your product or service.
Finally, I will answer the question about loading up the Keyword tag. If these keywords are not really what your site is about, and if you are not using or are unable to use these keywords naturally in the site – then they’re not the right keywords for your site. Again, loading your meta keyword tags with repeating or multiple variations of a keyword, or having a huge list of keywords is not going to help you get found. At the very least these keywords will be ignored and at the most you could be removed from the search engine’s index for spamming.
In summary, if it doesn’t make sense to a person reading it, then it probably isn’t going to fool a search engine either. You also have to wonder why these SEO companies need to solicit emails. If their methods were working so great, they would probably have ample business from their well-positioned websites, and wouldn’t need to go fishing for it. So the next time you receive one of these emails, reply back to them with a link to this blog 🙂