I’ll tell you who these complainers are not – the people that are on page one!

Putting Stock in One Keyword/Keyphrase

It does make me wonder, though – how many businesses are focusing on ranking for one or two huge keywords, all the while missing the thousands of long tail crumbs that are out there?  Nearly every call I get for potential SEO work goes something like this:

Customer: “How long before I rank for widgets?”

Me: “While I can’t tell you how long it will take, we can certainly put some effort towards helping you rank for that keyword.  However, the real gold is in keyphrases like blue widgets and left-handed widgets.  Both are phrases that are much more specific, thus bringing in a much warmer lead/customer. “

They’re missing the big picture, trying to put all their efforts (and budget) into ranking for something they may never be able to attain, while missing out on the thousands of customers just begging for their products.

These sub-results take you to SERP pages for that particular search.  So a click on the Maytag link would take you to results for the term Maytag.

From an SEO standpoint, this is a terrific addition.  Companies who are having a bit of difficulty (or lack of finances) to rank for huge terms now have a ‘second shot’ at ranking for them through these sub-results.

And with personalized search, these sub-results can really help out the local vendor who was smart enough to add their business to Google Places.  They’re now “showing up on page two” for a major term.

Sure, it’s a roundabout way to get there, but I’m going to go ahead and say they’ll see more organic traffic from this change.  What do you think?

If you’ve hired some web developer that’s stuck in the late nineties when it comes to design, well, you’re doing your business a great disservice.

• Would you hire a five year old to create a billboard design for your company?

• Would you hire a lawncare company to put in an inground pool?

• Would you hire a geologist to put in a new rock patio?

Of course not.

Defunct HTML

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the programming language that renders websites to your computer screen.  While there are many other languages that can produce this code, the end result is always HTML.

Back in the day (early 90s), there were some really cool behind-the-scenes portions of code that you could add to your site that would help it rank well.  One was called the meta tag. The search engines weren’t really smart back then, so webmasters would hide little words in this tag.  The point was to trick the spiders into thinking your website was about something that it really wasn’t about at all.

Why trick the search engines?  Well, if you put in a popular phrase (say, Paris Hilton), the search engines would assume your website was about her, and you’d move up in the rankings.  The further up you got, the more traffic you received.

And receiving traffic off a big keyphrase was just fine with them.  Once you got to their website (and found out it wasn’t about Paris Hilton at all), you were still more likely to click on an ad than you were to hit the BACK button.  You clicking on that ad meant the web guy got paid.  He provided no value, yet got paid for you visiting his site.

Your Web Guy Might Be Hurting You

Fast forward about 7 years and the search engines have become a lot smarter.  So smart, in fact, that they stopped looking at that meta tag altogether.  They ignore it.  Totally ignore it.

Which makes me wonder – why did your web guy (or girl, I know) ask you for a list of your top twenty keywords?

I’ll tell you why – because they don’t understand today’s search environment.

Just like in NASCAR, once you get lapped by the leader a few times, you might as well give up.  Webmasters like this are still working on 1998 code.  They aren’t keeping up with the times, they’re just doing what they think will help their customers.  But it won’t help.  In fact, it’ll hurt them.

Extra Code Means Slower Load

Since this meta tag is being ignored by the search engines, there’s really no reason for it to even be in your HTML.  But since it’s there, this means that every visitor to your website has to load that extra line of code before they can see your page.  The more they have to download, the longer it takes, and search engines don’t like that.

Since the search engines want to provide the best possible experience to their end users, they are taking into consideration the time that a website takes to load.  If it takes a while, they’ll penalize you.  And each little penalty adds up to pushing you further and further down the overall rankings.  Even though (at this time) page load is a minor penalty, why would you want anything on your site that’s going to hurt your rankings?

Check for the Code

Wondering if your web guy put this code in your website?  It’s easy to check.

1. Load up your page.
2. Right-Click somewhere in the page where there is no picture, just a ‘blank’ area
3. Select View Source
4. Push CTRL and the F key (Find)
5. Look for ‘keyword’
6. If it’s there, you’ll see a string something like:
   <meta name=”keywords” content=”widgets, blue, orange… blah blah”>

If you’ve got that tag, you may want to ask your web designer next time you talk to him/her why it’s there.

Don’t Confuse Keywords with Descriptions

There is another meta tag, the description tag, which is very important in your overall rankings.  Don’t get this confused with the keyword tag.  Read more on the description tag.

Defending Webmasters

Now I know this post comes across as a bit rough, but I think it’s important for small business owners to realize that hiring one person to do a job doesn’t mean they should do all.  There are some terrific web designers out there.  In fact, I’m not a web designer.  While I help optimize websites, I prefer to leave the design portion to those who know it best.

If you’ve got a good web guy, by all means hold onto him.  Just realize that you should be asking him questions.  If he gets stale, your website gets stale, and you’ve wasted a lot of money building it.

And when you’re ready to hire an Internet marketing guru, consider me.

It does have some great SEO benefit, though.  Think about it.

To get to the WW, do a search for anything.  I chose “Saint Louis Coffee”.  Once that SERP comes up, look above the results for a text link that says ‘Show Options’.  Click on it, then scroll down the left column until you see ‘Wonder Wheel’.

The wonder wheel is a wheel that spits out other suggested searches that you may want to try.  If you’re unsure about what you’re looking for, this is a great tool to give you that ah-ha “Oh! So that’s what it’s called” moment.

It’s also a great tool for small business owners that are trying to do their own SEO and are unsure where to start doing keyword research.  Sure, it’s going to be a slow painful way to get keywords, but if you’ve got no customers, you might as well be researching, right?

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Meet me at the Look at Me SEO seminar in Saint Louis on August 27th.  I’m speaking on “What is SEO and How Can it Help my Business?“, along with several other SEO experts during the one-day event.  Be there.

Do you use one of these?  If so, what are your thoughts on it? Do you like it? Is it worth the money? How did you choose which to use?

If you use a different program altogether, what is it? What are the things you like about it?

If you read through the post that inspired me, you’ll see that the SEO community is divided about how to handle these types of rankings. Are they ethical? Is it black/gray hat? Or is it just helping out your client in any way possible? Is it “just another keyword” that you and your competition rank for? Or is it hijacking?

I think I’ll continue to do it for my personal sites (affiliate sites, etc), but I’m not real sure if I want to do this for my clients. I’d love to hear what you think.