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This is one of theclearest and most detailed posts I've seen regarding on-page optimization. Great visuals, plain english and enough detail on each item to take action. Definitely worth a bookmark in your SEO Self-Help folder.

If there were two things to remember about the use of meta tags (meta keywords and meta descriptions) on your pages -- the first would be: not all search engines treat them the same.

The second, would be to honor the most basic tenet for all content creators -- "Remember the user." I'll venture to explain both.

Meta keywords were originally created to give search engines more detail about your Web site than could be contained in your page's title tag. But over time it was abused by those who stuffed it with lengthy lists of keywords, many of which had nothing to do with the content on the page just to game search ranking results. Therefore search engines stopped emphasizing the meta keywords in search ranking.

So does it still have value? Well depends on the search engine, but it seems clear that it has far less impact nowadays.

"Look at what Google itself has to say about the meta tags in its own Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide ... to begin with, the keywords meta tag simply isn’t mentioned at all." -- pcpro.co.uk

That would lead us to believe you shouldn't even bother with it. But ... 

SEOmoz.org points out that "we have seen that Yahoo does indeed use this tag for ranking although it is a minor factor. That said, we believe that Google and Bing ignore this tag and it doesn’t affect their rankings."

So meta keywords still hold some minor value on Yahoo, but little or none on Google and Bing.

What About Meta Description?

It's simpler with meta descriptions -- because it's not believed to have a significant affect on ranking -- BUT -- you should definitely use them. And here's why?

The entire goal of SEO is not to collect awards for Page 1 rankings -- it's to convince searchers to click those links and visit your site. That's where a well-crafted page title in concert with a meta description tag gives you the best chance on SERPs (search engine results page) to secure that click. 

Here are two examples of a Google search for "international news"

WTOC.com

International News - WTOC, Savannah, Georgia, news, weather and ...WTOC, Savannah, Georgia, news, weather and sports | International News. Member Center: Create Account|; Log In; Manage Account|; Log Out.

<meta name="Description" content="WTOC.com, the Southeast News Leader, news, weather and sports for Savannah, Geogia, the Coastal Empire and South Carolina Low Country."> 

NYTimes.com

International News - The New York Times Jul 12, 2009 ... Find breaking news, world news and multimedia on Africa, Canada, Mexico, South and Central America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Iraq.

<meta  name="description" content="Find breaking news, world news and multimedia on Africa, Canada, Mexico, South and Central America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Iraq." /> 

You can see that with the NYTimes result -- Google pulls directly from the page's meta description to provide a search result that provides a solid call to action. It tells the user they can find news and multimedia ... from specific countries and continents.

With the WTOC.com -- Google does not use the meta description entirely because it has almost nothing about international news  -- and therefore it tries to cobble a description together with other content on the page. This provides the user a jumbled, confusing and weak call to action.

So when crafting the meta description, imagine yourself as a user seeing the result for first time. They will ask themself, "Is this the link that has what I need?"  If you focus on the keywords you're optimizing for, you know their need -- all you require now is a sentence to explain that you've got the goods. 

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Rarely do important changes present themselves as easy tasks – but this next SEO must, does just that.  The page title is one of the key elements that determines a page’s rank.

The page title is the text that appears in the header of the browser when the page loads. In the HTML of the page, it’s displayed like this:

<TITLE>PageTitles.com | Pages | Titles | More</TITLE>

Here are few examples of live page titles:

1.       CNN.com Page Title:  CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News

2.       MSNBC.com Page Title:  Breaking News, Weather, Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports, Politics, Travel, Science, Technology, Local, US & World News - msnbc.com

3.       HomeDepot.com Page Title: Shop HomeDepot.com for Appliances, Patio Furniture, Hampton Bay Lighting & Fans, Power Tools & much more

4.       Lowes.com Page Title: Lowe's Home Improvement: Buy Kitchen Cabinets, Paint, Appliances & Flooring

These are pretty significant web sites, so they must have this stuff down pat, right?  Well not exactly, there are some basic rules regarding page titles, and each of the sites violates at least one of them. 

Page Title Tips

1. Use your top two keywords or keyword phrases (see: Research Your Keywords) that are targeted for that specific index page. Each index page should have a customized page title.
2. Keep those keywords at the front. Ideally the first two phrases are assigned the most weight in a Google ranking.
3. Avoid prepositions, conjunctions and unnecessary punctuation – use “|” or “—“ instead to separate them.
4. In most cases, don’t use your site or company name in the beginning of your page title. It’s a waste of valuable character space on a term for which you probably already rank and have very little competition. Who’s gonna outrank CNN.com for the term “cnn.com”? If you must include, add it to the end of the page title.
5. Keep it under 65 characters – that’s as much as Google reads. IE only displays about 100 characters, so keep it short.
6. Don't make your page title a simple string of keywords -- this is a practice that makes you prone to being filtered by Google as autogenerated content. 
7. Remember your page title will be the first thing a searcher sees, with their search terms bolded. It should convey a message that is a call to action or deliver the message you want them to understand about this page.

For more, watch this video primer on Page Title creation from SEOBook.com.

How Did Our Example Page Titles Fare?

Now, you can see CNN.com uses its site name as the first term in its page title, which is a waste of valuable page title real estate.

MSNBC.com tacks it's name on the end which is good, but the title it too long. Google only sees the first 65 characters. If their most important keywords are first it's not an issue, but keep that title short. Plus it's a string of keywords and delivers no message to the user.

HomeDepot.com could move the site name to the end and lose the preposition, punctuation and ampersands.

Lowes.com could move the site name to the end, but it's possible that "lowes home improvement" is their most important keyword (135K monthly searches) rather than "home improvement" (4M monthly searches). As it turns out they rank No.1 for both terms so it appears they have the best of both worlds. In addition, Lowes ranks ahead of Home Depot for the first product mentioned in both sites' page titles -- "appliances" and "kitchen cabinets" -- so they seem to be better SEO tuned than Home Depot.

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If talk of search engine optimization (SEO) triggers sweaty palms and that nervous nose whistle tic – relax because you have plenty of company.

There’s no shortage of theories, strategies and insider tips. But what about those who simply want to focus on the basic changes that can help us perform better on search engines. 

If you never tried to optimize your site/ blog – you can walk through the basics with me. Face it, you can’t run a marathon until you’ve tackled the 5K – so let’s first dig the running shoes out of the back of the closet and get out the door.

Before You Get Started

Can Google see your site?  Check this site to see if your pages return a 200 OK message, just punch in the URL for any page. You should get something similar to this "HTTP/1.1·200·OK(CR)(LF)". This tells Google your site is OK to crawl. Or you can simply perform a Google search of "site:yoursitename.com." If you see results, Google is seeing and indexing your site.

If Google can't crawl it, they can't index it. And if they can't index it, they can't include your site content in Google search results. Simple right? If you don't get the 200 OK message, there could be issues with your robot.txt file or some other issue. Check out Google's video tutorial, "My site isn't doing well in search" for the most common issues.

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You Can't Optimize Without a Target

Imagine practicing for months to shoot an NBA 3-pointer? You build up your leg strength, practice catching and shooting and how to set your feet. Then comes game time ... and you fire nothin' but air balls because you practiced on an 8-foot hoop instead of a 10-foot rim.

Well that's like optimizing your site for search without deciding what keywords you want to rank for. And don't say I want to rank for "all of them" 'cause it ain't happenin'.

Let's assume you're PetSmart.com and you have a new line of dog toys, specifically a new series of rubber kongs. You've got to pick the best keyword phrases to optimize for that will deliver people to the door step of this new product. How do you pick those keywords?

First, you'd go to Google's Keyword Tool and search the term that is most central to the focus of that index page. In this case I used "dog toys" and it delivered that and a slew of related terms.

So then I researched how the site performed for each of those keywords noting the term, search volume for that term, its Google rank, and the number of results served for that search term, or your competing pages. The terms and search volume are provided via Google's keyword tool. The rank and competing pages are revealed by simply doing a Google search for that term and noting where your site falls in the results. Count back to the No.1 result for your rank. The competing pages are listed in the upper right as the total number of results. That's your competition.  

Keyword | Seach Vol. | Rank | Competition

"dog toy" | 368,000  | #83  | 22.7M

"dog toys"  | 301,000 | #9 | 37.8M
            
"dogs toy" | 74,000 | 100+ | 10.7M

    "dogs toys"  | 60,500 | #80 | 20.0M

   "plush dog toy"  | 33,100 | #74 | 706K

    "toys for dogs"  | 18,100 | 100+ | 21.3M

   "kong dog toy"  | 14,800 | #3 | 467K

   "kong dog toys"  | 9,900 | #3 | 795K

   "rubber dog toy"  | 8,100 | #8 | 391K
   
"stuffed dog toy"  | 6,600 | 100+ | 706K

   "stuffed dog toys"  | 6,600 | 100+ | 816K

Next, consult your local analytics like Omniture, Webtrends, etc. If you're not tracking your site with analytics, you can set up a free Google Analytics account. These programs will tell you how many people visited your site via search AND what keywords they searched to get there. These keywords should be considered when choosing your targets, because they are already working for you to some degree.

Now, based on those results we can get a good idea of what terms are critical for us. Keep in mind you want to optimize for terms that will put you on Page 1 (top 10 results) for Google. Approximately 68% of searchers don't click results beyond Page 1, so you've got to be there. If you're already there, moving up above the fold (top 3 to 5 links) can increase traffic 3x to 4x, according to marketingexperiments.com.

Look for terms that:

+ Are focused on your goal and content for that index

+ Has a decent amount of search traffic. Don't be turned off by smaller search totals that are highly focused on your content. Ten thousand people looking for rubber dog toys can be more valuable than 100,000 people looking for dog supplies.

+ Gives you a fighting chance to rank on Page 1. Preferably it's a term you are showing at least some limited success with now -- a rank within the first four pages or top 40 results.

Based on that and my goal to optimize for a new line of rubber dog kongs -- I'd focus on "kong dog toy (s)" and "rubber dog toy" for those index pages.  As part of my general SEO for the site, I would focus on driving the rank for "dog toy" from a low Page 1 to a top-3 result on Page 1 across all the site pages.

With those terms set as my targets -- I would then move on to optimization techniques to improve the rank of those pages. And I'll cover those in upcoming posts.

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