Let us explain.

When we mention that we’re involved in Search Engine Marketing, the second thing folks often do is ask why their site isn’t ranking. (The first thing they do, of course, is call us braggers for being search engine optimizers!) Anyway, here is how the conversation often goes …

Them: “Speaking of rocket science, my site doesn’t appear when you search the term ‘rocket science’ in Google.”

Us: “But in looking at your site, the terms ‘Rocket’ and ‘Science’ never appear together in the titles, headings or pages.”

Them: “But it’s what we do. It’s obvious.”

Us: “It’s not obvious to the search engines. Put the phrase on your site, write copy about it, and optimize for it!”

It sounds so fundamental, but you’d be surprised at how often that happens. Sometimes, the reason for the lack of rankings isn’t that cut and dried. For example, the person may have a Flash-heavy site that has all kinds of pretty moving pictures and parts about Rocket Science, but no spider food in the form of text that the search engines can devour. Or the site is competing in the search engines against Rocket Scientists from around the world, when all the owner wants is a little piece of the pie in, say, the Kansas City market.

So we advise the owner to go to work getting content created, adding copy where there is none (or external resources when main content is in Flash). Creating a blog is always good for this, as is creating pages by adding copy from sales letters, brochures, presentations and other resources used to communicate about the business.

Then, create internal links within your site that hyperlink pages via anchor text containing the terms “Rocket Science” and “Kansas City” and other relevant qualifiers. Use those same terms in your page headings and title tags. For good measure, add a strong description of each page in the meta description tags. And populate the meta keyword tags as well, though it won’t help a lot for rankings purposes.

Finally, get some related sites (vendors are great for this) and directories to link to your site with “rocket science” in the hyperlink. And see our tips for titles and meta descriptions for further assistance.

A recent study about search engine ranking factors, highlights where keywords are most effective on a website. The study results were gathered from a 2009 poll taken by a panel of 72 SEO experts. The top ranking on-page (keyword-specific) ranking factor was using the keyword in the title tag on the page.

Summarizing methods that we already knew and what these findings supported, here are tips on where to place your keywords on your site:

• Title Tags. Get your keyword into the first couple of words in the title tag if possible.
• Domain Name and URL. This one’s more difficult we know. Many of us don’t have a site devoted to just one topic, rather a collection of topics. So if your keyword can’t be in the root domain name, consider adding it to the subdomain name or page name URL.
• Headings On The Page.  Get your keyword into the H1 tag/main headline on your page. 
• Copy On The Page. Include your keyword in the copy of the page. This will let Search Engines find the content on your site that does relate to the keyword searched on.
• Internal and External Linking. Include your keyword in any internal cross-linking or external linking to your site. Include this method in your internal SEO practices. When possible, request external sites that are linking to your site to include the specific keyword in their link.
• Description Meta Tag. Include your keyword in the description meta tag. Google will pull the description meta tag and display it in the search results, if the keyword is included.
• Image Alt Text. Include your keyword in your brief descriptive image alt tags.

And, of course, always make your page and/or website relevant to your keyword with rich, supporting content, videos and images. Remember, keywords are still important, it’s just a matter of how you use them.

Don’t spend an extraordinary amount of time populating the keyword meta tag. And don’t stuff it with irrelevant words. But do spend time focusing on what the main keywords/phrases are for a page, do create content that utilizes those words, and do populate those words into the meta tag. You might even add synonyms and a misspelling or two to help the engines.

At the time, we said, “the search engines virtually ignore meta tag keyword entries.” Recent developments indicate that you can strike the word “virtually” and safely say, “the search engines ignore meta tag keyword entries.”

In fact, Google engineer Matt Cutts mentions that fact three times in a short four paragraph blog post, and highlights it more with a video (below). For good measure, Google says the same thing in its Official Blog, and adds the Cutts video again for good measure. (I think they’re trying to tell us they don’t use the keywords meta tag.) Recently, Yahoo was quoted as saying the same thing at SMX East in New York. (UPDATE: Danny Sullivan says that Yahoo does use the keyword meta tag, and used this word xcvteuflsowkldlslkslklsk to prove it.)

So, should you spend a lot of time on the keyword meta tag? No. Should you spend time researching keywords and phrases about which you’ll create content, pages, description meta tags, title tags and link opportunities. Yes! (And go ahead and put those in the keyword meta tag for good measure, especially if you use the Google Search Appliance or similar tool.)

In our opinion, properly deployed title tags give you as much “bang for your buck” as any SEO activity. Sure, backlinks, anchor text, content, etc. are important. And those all are tie-ins to the proper use of title tags. But the title consists of just a few words and can be implemented very easily.

What is it? The title tag appears along with the meta description and keyword tags between the head tags on your page’s code. While the meta data isn’t seen by the page viewer, the title tag is (see below).

How many words? We like to limit the title to eight words or so. The more words you use in the title, the more it dilutes the value of each word. Keeping the amount of keywords down to the most important terms on a page gives more weight to those terms.

Where does it appear? In highly critical areas. The captures above from partner site Widick Marketing show that the title will appear as the link on your listing in the SERPs (search engine results pages) and as it appears at the top of the user’s browser. And the title is your site’s name by default when a user bookmarks your page.

Most importantly, search engines place a high value on the title tag, but it has to be used properly. Stuffing way too many words into the title, or putting words that have nothing to do with your page, won’t help. But putting a few terms that are naturally used on the page, in the H1 headings, in anchor text, in pages linking to your site, in the meta data, etc., helps the search engines know what a page is about and how many other internal and external pages think your page is important for that term or terms. And because you only get so much real estate to use, the search engines know that phrases in your title are highly important on your page.

Finally, make sure each page on your site has a unique title that doesn’t feature your company name as the first few words (you’ll rank well for your company name without this boost). It takes a little effort, but it’s worth the pay off in terms of higher rankings in the search engines and more visitors to your site.

The description tag is a 25-30 words or so (don’t obsess) explanation of what your site or a particular page is about … your elevator speech. Be clear and concise. For the home page, tell what you do and where. For interior pages, tell the most important subject covered on that page.

The meta description is most important when the term a searcher queries in Google is included in your tag. In that case, all or part of your meta description will be shown as the snippet on the Google SERP (search engine results page). Usually, the engines utilize a few words on either side of the term where it appears on the page, and the snippet MAY result in a meaningful sentence. Oftentimes, it doesn’t. So if you include the most important keyword phrases for the page in your tag, you can control the snippet. Who doesn’t want that?

Here’s an example: The meta description for partner site Dobies Healthcare Group is:

<meta name=”description” content=”Dobies Healthcare Group, a health care marketing agency in Kansas City, has provided expert advice and marketing communications and advertising services to the healthcare industry for 17 years.” />

As the nearby screen capture shows, a search on Google for: “health care marketing agency in Kansas City” returns a Google maps listing for Dobies Healthcare Group, and then the standard listings. In the No. 1 position is Dobies.com, with the snippet being:

“Dobies Healthcare Group, a health care marketing agency in Kansas City, has provided expert advice and marketing communications and advertising services to …”

… which is a slightly truncated version of our exact meta description. And  the queried keywords are bolded for an added bonus.

By placing the keywords for which we want to be ranked directly into our meta description, we’ve achieved a better snippet for our services than Google would have done for us. We’ll next cover the meta title tag.

Today, of course, that’s no longer the case. So clients who engage us for SEM (search engine marketing) purposes often ask if meta tags are even important anymore. And the answer is no … and yes. No, because the search engines virtually ignore meta tag keyword entries. Yes, because spending time researching and developing keywords to enter into meta tags focuses attention on what is most important on the page, what words appear naturally on the page, and what words should appear more often.

Don’t spend an extraordinary amount of time populating the keyword meta tag. And don’t stuff it with irrelevant words. But do spend time focusing on what the main keywords/phrases are for a page, do create content that utilizes those words, and do populate those words into the meta tag. You might even add synonyms and a misspelling or two to help the engines. This article’s image shows how easy it is to enter meta data for your blog using the All In One SEO Pack plug-in for WordPress.

We’ll cover meta tag descriptions and titles in another post.