I just got out of a meeting with a company interested in contracting our search engine optimization services. And once again, I heard the two most common big myths about web site optimization:
Myth #1: Will you handle putting all our top Meta tag keywords into the HTML code of every single web page in order to get maximum Google rankings?
Myth #2: Does your service include submitting our site every month to Google and the other major search engines and directories?
This company’s “in-house” SEO expert / advisor insisted that any optimization my company did for their company would have to include those two procedures.
I had to tell him and his colleagues that I would be wasting their money if I did so.
eTrafficJams.com uses many different search engine optimization techniques, all of them legal and effective, to gain higher Google rankings and conversions for our clients. But relying on Meta tag keywords and monthly submissions to improve rankings are not among them. Why?
Dumping the Meta Tag Keywords
Since Google is the search engine of choice these days, let’s concentrate on what Google’s spiders like to eat. This is tough to track because its robots are fickle. One day they like peas, the next they prefer pickles all part of the exciting and sometimes heart-stopping world of changing algorithms.
But a long time ago, Google spiders lost their taste for Meta tag keywords completely. They now prefer munching on keywords and keyword phrases embedded in the text itself. Google made this change to foil unscrupulous webmasters who were force-feeding the bots misleading Meta tags.
It’s true there are still some search engines that snack on Meta keywords but I am 100% confident that if you focus on or hire a search engine optimization company that promotes redoing your meta tags, you will be very disappointed in the coming months. And your sales, or should I say lack there of, will be the proof.
Regular Search Engine Submissions? Waste of Time
You’ve seen the promotional ads:
“Only $99 to submit your site to 10,000 search engines every month!”
“Incredible software automatically submits your site monthly!”
It’s not hard to understand why people eager for higher rankings might want to believe the hype that something as simple as monthly submissions will deliver the goods. But that’s all it is. Hype.
In fact, even if you never submitted to Google, its spiders would eventually find your site in one of their regular web crawls and give it a ranking, likely within a month or two of your site going live. If a site is optimized correctly, it will get just as high a ranking whether it was submitted to Google once, 100 times, or not at all.
eTrafficJams.com definitely recommends properly registering / submitting your site to the main engines and directories. But before you do that, turn your attention to other, more fruitful optimization strategies like proper web page optimization, link building and crafting keyword-rich copy.
Search engine optimization can be a complex, frustrating business. To do it well, you have to spend a lot of time learning its quirks and monitoring its changes. If you’re too busy with your job or business to take up search engine optimization as a sideline, then stay tuned.
Michael Pedone is the President / CEO of eTrafficJams.com, a search engine optimization and website marketing company http://www.etrafficjams.com> located in Clearwater, Florida that specializes in getting targeted, eager-to-buy traffic to your site. You can catch him blogging at: http://www.etrafficjams.com/blog/>.
