Keyword meta tags no longer the most important tools for website popularity

Search engine optimization (SEO) has always been the pivot for website visibility on the Internet. An SEO tool – keyword meta tagging – has always been used extensively by SEO experts in streamlining content. But not many people know that no longer does keyword meta tagging impact rankings as it used to in majority of the search engines! And, keyword meta tags do not effect directory rankings at all.

The Internet has evolved and so have Internet surfers. Today, Internet users have several options to look for data apart from typing keywords in search engines. Users can rely on several tools like links from various portals, email newsletters, newsgroup references, Internet banner advertisements, social forums, blogs etc to find websites catering to their needs. Then, there are the non-Internet ways like through friends, books, newspaper advertisements etc that lead users to a website. Incidentally, according to several surveys hyperlinks and directories have lately become the most popular pathways to finding a website. Search engines are only the third popular tools to locate websites.

Most users do not know the difference between the functioning of search engines and directories. Search engines maintain databases of web pages and use programs like robotic spiders and index web pages to help users locate popular websites. The spiders crawl around the Internet to rank websites according to links and what other users are submitting in search entries. The secret is that the way search engines build their spider-surveyed databases includes results they have found in directories as well. Different search engines also use different variables to list, rank and index websites on the Internet.

Directories are also databases but they list websites by content categories. Most directories have a website of their own so users can search in their databases. So, in effect, a search engine lists pages while a directory lists websites! Directories are edited and maintained by human reviewers and editors who go through various websites submitted for their perusal and then rank them. Of course, directories also integrate search engine results.

Several search engines are fed by directories. Most of the time a user may not even know that the results he is seeing in a search engine are actually fed from a directory. For example, a directory like DMOZ sends results to more than 100 search engines and websites. It is used as a primary source by several major directory sites such as AOL Search, Lycos and Netscape Search. Different directories use different ranking variables. But almost none of them use keyword meta tags as the main variable!

So, for search engines what matters is:
• Popularity of links and hyperlinks from various websites
• Body Tag (body text) which is part of the HTML code that has the actual text that shows on a page (depends on keyword/phrase proportion to overall content, first 200 characters being most important, bold text)
• Title that is part of the HTML code and displayed after a search engine or directory result as a description of the website

In case of directories that have humans editing them what matters is:
• Text in hyperlinks
• Meta tag descriptions that are used in HTML code to describe the website
• Alternate Text Tag that describe pictures/photos in in HTML code
• The degree of agreement between keywords provided in the keyword meta tag and the words on the page.

Only Infoseek Spider (supplemental to Go Directory) and Inktomi (Yahoo) use keyword meta tags but not as a primary method to rank pages. Search engines that completely ignore keyword metags are FAST, Google, Lycos spiders, Web Crawler, Excite, Direct Hit. The Altavista search engine does read these keyword meta tags but does not use them in ranking websites. The HotBot search engine uses keyword meta tags only to decide supplemental results.

So, when it comes to your website really getting high rankings what matters in order of importance is
• Link popularity
• Body Text Content
• Hidden text that is of the same color as the background page and not visible to the user but read by search engine spiders. Some web developers use this technique to fool spiders by using keywords not relating to the website but using hidden text in this way will get the website listed as a spam one.
• Keywords in the title tag and at the beginning of the body tag text
• High frequency of keywords in the body tag text
• Keyword meta tags

Tags: keyword meta tagging, meta tagging, network handlers, search engine optimization