I'm completely shocked about the popularity of my recent exposition on search ranking factors. The traffic has been more than substantial, bringing about 10,000 unique visitors to SEOmoz since Thursday. A normal four-day period would have around 1,600, so it's definitely a shake-up, not to mention the links (350+ already).
There has been plenty of criticism (both valid and less so), and I take full blame for that. The initial article was not authored with the care and precision that I would have given to a document that had the eyeballs of thousands. I've made some initial changes in the wording to make it clear that my intentions are to show what "may" impact rankings and not to make recommendations about what web content creators should or should not do, nor to present all of the items as fact - they are virtually all speculation (albeit highy informed speculation).
In seeking to make such a highly read article more valuable, I've sought the help of some SEO experts in the field to vote on each of the ranking factors and add their own comments (as I promised at TW). From Danny Sullivan to Jill Whalen to Ammon Johns and Bill Slawski, they've all agreed and I couldn't be more pleased. I hope that by pulling together this group of a dozen experts, we can make an article that can serve as a reference for a long time to come. After all, it's already been tagged by almost 400 people at del.icio.us - so it's my duty to see that it's as comprehensive and accurate as possible. Many thanks to the contributors, all of whom will get recognition in the finalized article (which should hopefully be ready by Thurs. of this week).
Sufyaaan - My understanding (this is straight from the source - Yahoo! & Google reps at SES shows) is that it is appropriate and proper to use the meta keywords tag for common misspellings. I've also heard that it can be used for plurals or other forms of the word (i.e. stemming).
Thanks for your input.
I'm new to this blog so forgive me, but I have a question on this topic and don't know if anyone reads posts on old topics like this. Is it discouraged to post on old topics?
Anyways, I sent randfish an email with my question in it and I have a feeling that was another mistake! For after all, I'm sure he has tons of other more lucrative emails to check than those from an SEO "noobie." But we all have to start somewhere eh?
So seeing as I'm presumably wrong to post on an old blog and wrong to send an email, I decided to do both! :) This way, maybe I would achieve an answer that is credible on a question that challenges the opinions given by 2 leading experts Danny Sullivan and Jill Whalen that were referenced earlier in this blog. That said, here's basically what I wrote to Rand in the email:
I read the articles by Danny Sullivan and Jill Whalen on the subject of the meta keywords tag and I find myself disagreeing with both of them to some degree. Partially due to the post above by Randfish: "My understanding (this is straight from the source - Yahoo! & Google reps at SES shows) is that it is appropriate and proper to use the meta keywords tag for common misspellings. I've also heard that it can be used for plurals or other forms of the word (i.e. stemming)," which goes against the conclusions in Sullivan and Whalen's articles!!! They both say the tag is completely useless in the end (Jill Whalen saying it was useful for misspellings at first and then going back on that in a 2007 update) and yet Rand seems to suggest that the keyword tag is useful because common misspellings, other forms of words, etc. may be used as search queries and if you have these in your keywords meta tag, your site will come up where the competition will not if they did not include these common misspellings, variant forms of words, etc. Also, there may be people that query uncommon terms describing the content of your page in an uncommon way due to their ignorance in the subject matter they are querying. You may be able to predict some of these less common terms, but be unable to find practical ways to include them in your body text or titles/headings so you could theoretically benefit by putting them in your keywords meta tag so that when these synonyms or uncommon terms are searched, you are at least indexed for them and "on the map." Then, if these uncommon terms are queried, you will show up in the listings and your competitors will not.
Personal example: I know for one that I had a VERY hard time finding water proof shoes that I could run in at the fitness center in order to get in a jogging routine that would be easy on the knees - jogging in the lap pool. Finding shoes like that was hard because I didn't know the right terminology but was sure they must exist. I tried searching ALL KINDS of terms, "water proof shoes," "underwater shoes," "pool running shoes," etc. The right term that I lacked was "aquatic" because once that keyword was entered along with "running shoes," I got tons of great results (AQx Aquatic Training Shoes - the ideal search query in this case. I was WAY OFF). I ended up finding them in a round about way after about 20 minutes of surfing and nearly calling it quits! But the point is, if sites selling this kind of shoe had some of the less common or slightly straying search terms (like my search queries ended up proving to be), I would have found it quicker and bought from them right away as opposed to finding their competitors eventually after trying many queries. So in the end, if a webmaster had foreseen the terminology of keywords that I chose to type in and included that in the keywords meta tag, he/she would have gotten me as their customer. Right? So my conclusion is that the site with the most possible long tailed keywords, uncommon terms, misspelled variables, and stemming variations will take advantage of the people like me and even people who don't understand effective querying and type things like "ned to fnd grate, cheep runing sheos" into the search bar! Marketing to these kinds of users could be HUGE in my opinion. Why doesn't anyone seem to feel the same? I KNOW the keywords tag doesn't help with ranking. But let's say you already have a respected and established page with lots of link juice and a PageRank of 7... Once that is established, any word mentioned related to that subject matter, be it misspellings, uncommon terms, long tailed keywords, etc, in your keywords meta tag will put you on the map for some search engines (notably Yahoo! and Ask.com). Will it not? And once on the map, given your trustability, will you not be in the top results for that word? From the facts I have gathered, you WOULD. My conclusion is that I think it sounds like people discard the keyword tag just because it gives no weight and they are failing to realize that simply containing that one special word that was missing in you text may get you that one person typing in an odd query to be your next customer. And what if this happens more often that one may realize? People could be losing out on a LOT of potential customers this way...
PS. Jill Whalen's article suggested that too many words in this tag may lead to sites thinking you are word stuffing in a blackhat way and penalize you. Is this a fact? How many words are too many? Can you trust an engineer's algorithm for determining if you are overusing this tag? How do I know whether they will deem what I put in this tag as "fully" relevant which can often be subjective? Also, why is it suggested to put words ALREADY IN your body text into your keyword tag (as Jill suggested) when you KNOW the keyword tag isn't for ranking and has no weight. If the only purpose of that tag is to include words that you didn't include elsewhere for good reason (like mispellings), then including words already in your body text sounds redundant and useless indeed. Don't get that!
I agree that Meta Description tag is important for SE ranking without any doubt. Dan Thies has also pointed this out in his article 'META Descriptions on Google' - I recommend that every site use a META description tag on the home page at least. For other pages that may show up on multi-word queries, you may be better off having a snippet displayed on the search results. Google is giving you some control over how your listings appear, at least for now.
But Meta Keyword tag is unimportant for rankings. It's not the part of content but code. It is displayed neither in the SERPs like Meta Description tag nor in the page copy itself. May be this have made the search engines to ignore it completely for relevacy as well as ranking.
I have heard many SEOs telling that the keywords you place in Meta Keyword tag must be present in the document (eighter exact matches or similar in meaning) otherwise Google might think that you are spamming.
As for using misspelling in Meta Keyword tag, I would like to read what Google states in its Guidelines for Webmasters - Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles listed above will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.
Isn't G going to disapprove using misspellings? Won't it consider such practice as 'misleading practice' ?
sufyaaan - I gave meta kws and descrip a 2... I also think they're relatively unimportant except for their specified purposes - kws to list misspellings and the focused kws and descrip to show in the SERPs (which is actually very important for CTR).
It amazes me how simple SEO is, but with all the competition (blackhat mostly) going on, it makes it almost impossible for some to just write a good content on a standards compliant page and be done. Blogs and their viral nature seem to be reversing this though. Blogs seem to create authors that are concerned about what they say and who they link to. I'd say it promotes the internet that Google has always wanted.
This is a very comprehensive list of SE ranking factors. But one thing that really surprised me is that you mentioned 'Meta Keywords Tag' as an important factor in rankings. I think it used to be important but not now. I have read Danny Sullivan's article Death Of A Meta Tag and what Jill Whalen wrote about it in If you had to give up one meta tag, the meta keyword tag would be the one to give up and I completely agree with both of them. Well, keep up the good work, Rand!