| Phil Payne 2006-11-19, 7:43 pm |
| > 1) When adding keywords, is it more effective to use phrases or individual
> words? For example, if I am selling various types of widgets, which would=
be
> better: "ordinary widgets, special widgets, customised widgets" or
> "ordinary, special, customised, widgets"?
> 2) Is it good practice to use verbs in their various tenses e.g. "buy
> widgets online, buying widgets online" ?
Yers. Fascinating topic. For instance click on:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=3D...&fr=3Dyfp-t-50=
1&toggle=3D1&cop=3Dmss&ei=3DUTF-8
The top hit (below the paid ads) is one of mine - it's about the Audi
quattro voice synthesiser. Check out the source and you'll find
"sprachausgabe" _only_ appears in the keyword metatag. It's just the
German word for "voice synthesiser", which is what the page is about.
Play around with the search positions with and without that keyword,
and you'll soon see that it works.
So if any a=DFhole (and there are a few about, believe me) tells you
that the keywords metatag never works, you can call them a liar.
It certainly doesn't work this way with Google - but I have seen some
odd effects that are best explained by Google taking a look every now
and then.
Here's the question - is it worth bothering? My view is that it
certainly is, especially for sites in highly competitive sectors.
Everyone is focussed on Google and neglects things like keyword
metatags (and a few other things) so the field is open on the other
search engines. I've spent some time working out what does and doesn't
work with them.
You can achieve a hell of a lot between <head> and </head>.
On Wednesday last week, 31.8% of my search engine traffic came from
Google. I have a #3 position for the favourite keywords. 27.3% came
from MSN and around 11% from Yahoo, on both of which I'm #1 for those
keywords. There's some minor Ask and Gigabot stuff - not much. But my
"other engine" traffic significantly exceeds my Google traffic on a
regular basis.
Yes - Google is the biggest - but it's also the most fought-over.
Maybe only 20% of all searches are done on the other engines, but I'd
rather have 95% of that than 2% of the 80% of searches Google commands.
But - as elsewhere - lean and mean. No more than two lines.
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