A while ago, trying to describe the concept of Search Engine Optimisation to a friend, I hit upon this analogy:

“It’s like Isaac Newton trying to calculate the exact force of gravity. Google’s algorithm is like gravity, and all the SEOs are like Newton, trying to figure the effect of this algorithm on their client’s sites. However, you have to imagine that God keeps screwing with Newton by changing the force of gravity on a daily basis just for the fun of it.”

In the world of Search Engine Optimisation, Google can afford to be seen as a somewhat malevolent force – toying with its index at will – seeing as (according to Hitwise) it has captured over 60% of global search volume. Its closest rival, Yahoo! accounts for less than half this amount, and thus Google has ensured a steady stream of SEOs scrambling to unravel Google’s (constantly changing) algorithm and achieve the holy trinity of: 1) high Page Rank, leading to 2) a high rank on the search engine results page (SERP) and thus 3) higher AdSense earnings.

However, this could all be set to change with the possibility of Microsoft buying out Yahoo!. Although Yahoo! has resisted such a bid in the past, Microsoft is offering shareholders a considerable premium for their shares in the struggling company, which has recently suffered job cuts and falling profits. So far discussion has mostly been regarding the effects on the SEM (Search Engine Marketing) industry. However, at this point we’ve seen little discussion on the SEO implications of this potential take-over.

The three major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft’s MSN) account for almost 95% of global search volume. As mentioned previously, Google accounts for approximately 60% of searches. However, the combined forces of Yahoo! and MSN total almost 35% of search volume, making it a worthy rival and perhaps encouraging SEOs to optimise for their search as well as – or instead of – Google’s. Microsoft has realised this potential, offering Yahoo! shareholders a hefty premium (around 60% above Yahoo!’s market value) to take control of Yahoo!’s search engine.

Yahoo! themselves have a record of buying out other search engines, including Overture, AllTheWeb, Inktomi and AltaVista. Prior to 2004, Yahoo! used Google’s index as part of their own search functions before developing their own index. Furthermore, Inktomi (one of the companies acquired by Yahoo!) once powered MSN search, until Microsoft to develop its own search engine. Both of these events happened in 2004, which happens to be just before Google released its Jagger update – this may explain some of the fundamental differences between Google and the Yahoo! and MSN search engines.

So what might we expect from an MSN-owned Yahoo! search engine results page? During our SEO research, we have found the following consistent patterns between Yahoo!, MSN and Google:

• Lower Google PR pages that would normally not appear on the front pages of Google will appear on Yahoo! and MSN. This would suggest that both sites have a different metric of quality and relevance than Google

• More emphasis on volume and less on relevance for links in Yahoo! and MSN, especially in MSN. This is possibly because Google developed its Jagger updates which actively targeted linking behaviors like mass reciprocal linking after both companies had started developing their own indexes and already had a large amount of data to base their work on

• Google will give more weight to a diverse linking profile, where inbound links are directed towards different pages within your site

• Google tends to fluctuate and update faster, and contains a lot of location specific information, for instance providing Google maps in SERPs. They have also suggested that they may include new SERP elements such as time-lines in the near future

• Yahoo! and MSN are more susceptible to aggressive link building campaigns, as Google filters links over time and may exclude (“sandbox”) domains with unnatural link patterns. Similarly, Google tends to filter a page for keywords or phrases that are used excessively

• Google gives the most value to factors such as site age and geographical factors. However, Google has also been criticized for allowing older domains with “spammy” links to rank well. As a result, it generally takes longer to rank in Google than the other search engines

Due to Google’s perceived bias towards old, established sites, it seems possible that newer sites targeting competitive search terms might abandon optimising for Google altogether and instead focus their efforts on achieving a higher rank in the MSN/Yahoo! index, thus loosening Google’s current stranglehold on the SEO and SEM market. In turn, searchers unhappy with results returned by a Google search could be confident that the MSN/Yahoo! product would return markedly different results, due to the variation in the quality and relevance metrics. If Microsoft successfully acquires Yahoo! I suspect we will see a lot of smaller, newer businesses optimising for MSN/Yahoo! rather than solely focusing on Google. This could potentially create more diversity in the search engine world as we see older, stronger businesses at the top of the Google index and newer, more active businesses gaining a greater edge in Yahoo! and MSN.

Sources:

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/bill-tancer/2006/08/us_july_search_volume_numbers.html

http://www.seobook.com/relevancy/

http://business.smh.com.au/microsoft-offers-50b-for-yahoo/20080202-1pmp.html

Approaches to Social Media Optimisation, Viral Marketing & Social Media Marketing

There is a good chance you have heard of SEO (search engine optimisation). A newer, less known form of traffic building is SMO (Social Media Optimisation). Social Media Networks represent a potentially massive amount of traffic, and so building media that will be distibuted virally through social media networks makes good business sense. This post will hopefully demystify what SMO, SMM and SMA are and how you can ‘optimise’ a piece of media for distribution in social media networks.

One of the main advantages in social media in terms of advertising is the way that one personal will tend to “infect” a group of friends and affiliates with a piece of media, i.e. viral marketing. In looking at different social media networks and the viral media that passes through them, there are some distinct patterns we can learn from. Many of these projects have succeeded because of their ability to be easily transmitted, and so we have examined how this has contributed to their success.

Using Video & Flash for Social Media Marketing & “Internet Phenomena”

Flash and video are great for social media networks because they are one of the most “re-postable” formats. The ability of a user to take some content and repost it on whatever social media network they want allows you to reach a much greater audience. While a website can be linked to, a YouTube style flash page can be embedded directly into the page. This means that people don’t have to “trust” your link in order to view your content – they can view it on a page they already trust (e.g. a friend’s MySpace page).

It also means that the video will be placed in an environment where friends and family will see, so it has the potential to filter down beyond users of your site. Because of this, it is a good idea to include the “re-post” code so that it can be copied from any location to another. In order for something to be viral, it has to be easily transmittable.

Example 1:

http://eepybird.com/- Coke and Mentos

Format: video

Content: these videos feature an extreme version of the popular meme of adding Coke to Mentos to produce an eruption. The “performances” usually involve large quantities of Coke and the creation of fountains by timing the adding of the mentos to the Coke.

Social Media Optimisation Strategy: every video on eepybird.com has Revver embed code. Revver is a video sharing social media network like YouTube, and automatically creates the option for viewers of a video to re-embed the video in pages. This means that people watching the video on a site other than eepybird.com can still easily re-post this content.

Criticisms: all of the videos should have some reference to eepybird.com such as a watermark so that people can find the original source.

Example 2:

Jonti Picking – Badger, badger, badger! (http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/badgers/)

Format: flash animation

Content: this video is a continuous loop featuring a song and dancing badgers created by Jonti Picking (animator of Weebl and Bob) and released on Weebls-Stuff.com (Picking’s website). The repeated sound of “Badger badger” sounds like a drum machine and because it is a Flash animation it is able to loop forever, adding to the comedy (and torture) of the video. The video was republished on a number of large animation networks including AlbinoBlacksheep.com, weebls-stuff.com and Youtube

Social Media Optimisation Strategies: this works because it is fast to load, hypnotic, simple and fun. The fact that the song and video is a perfect loop and only has a couple of words makes it very memorable. It also created a large number of spin-offs after the meme had been established, which in turn strengthened the cultural saturation of the clip.

Criticisms: although this video first hit social networks around 2003, I have only just learned who actually created it. While the concept is great and has been a tremendous success, I don’t affiliate it with Jonti Picking (creator of ‘Weebl and Bob’ and weebls-stuff.com). This could have been prevented through the effective use of “re-post” code, and the embedding of a link inside the Flash player.

Example 3:

Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine – Ask a Ninja (www.askaninja.com)

Fomat: Podcast Series

Content: the audience of the podcast is asked to write in and ‘Ask a Ninja’ (played by Douglas Sarine) solutions to everyday problems. The episodes are around 5 minutes long and usually consist of comedic solutions based around the “ninja” way of life involving killing skills and special powers, and a lot of exaggerated hand gestures. The Ninja’s tagline is “I look forward to killing you soon”.

Social Media Optimisation: again, every “Ninja” video comes with and embed code which is also transmitted to re-posted video. It also takes re-posting a step further by having a “related content” button which shows you other “Ninja videos”, and gives you the ability to download the video onto your computer and a link for a feed so you know when videos have been updated.

Criticism: this is a very advanced viral campaign. My only criticism is that the video to embed is very large, and might prevent it from being embedded in MySpace or similar social media profile pages.

Lessons We Can Learn for Social Media Optimisation with Video

Simple clips with a repeatable meme which are easily transmitable through reposting code (and self-contained re-posting code for secondary reposts) are great for Social Media Optimisation. To complete the effect, the media should always link to your site somehow (a html link is best as you will get the added SEO benefit). Additionally you should always have some form of (subtle) branding for each clip so people know who created it, without being obtrusive to the media itself.

Social Media Applications

Like a video, a social media application is good because it can be embedded in a page that is already trusted. For example a user is less likely to feel resistant to an application displayed on a friend’s Facebook page then a page they have never visited before.

Example 4:

Superpoke (Facebook Application)

Content: this application extends the “poke” functionality of Facebook, and allows you to send small messages through friend’s feeds with graphics and other content.

Social Media Optimisation: the creators have taken an existing network trend/behavior (the “Poke”) and have added additional functionality to it. Probably the most clever functionality of the application is its ability to unlock new types of pokes by sending a certain number of pokes, making it into a game. Users can also contribute days and events that should be considered for a new poke.

Criticism: they have not moderated their user contribution forum at http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2357179312 . This is not good as new users may be detered.

Example 5:

Hatching Eggs (Facebook Application)

Content: allows Facebook users to send “eggs” to other users, which “hatch” over a couple of days to reveal cute, fluffy animals (or alternatively toads and alligators depending on your relationship with the recipient).

Social Media Optimisation: this application is great from an uncertainty/curiosity perspective. As animals can either be cute and fluffy or not so cute and fluffy and it takes time to find out, users are driven by their curiosity to accept the application invitation (this drive is lacking in many Facebook applications). Users also gain access to new eggs when they send a certain number of eggs to other users.

Criticism: one the egg has hatched the curiosity disappears. Variations like “What’s in the box” would be good. Also, different graphics for the eggs themselves would help to keep curiosity going after the first egg has hatched as it is something new and different.

Lessons we can learn for Social Media Optimisation using Applications

I have picked on Facebook here as it has come under a lot of criticism for churning out useless clones and invasive or deceptive applications from companies trying to push products and services. The first thing to remember about Social Media Networks is that people are there to socialise, and your application shouldn’t interfere with that – it should enhance it.

Secondly you application should evoke some some of curiosity or uncertainty with your uses (like “Hatching Eggs”) or unite users behind sets of common causes (like users contributing events to “Super-Poke” so they can share them with other users). It needs to keep this curiosity or cause going to maintain interest.

If you already know what social bookmarking is, please click here to find out how not to use social bookmarks.

Social Media Marketing

I have seen a lot of articles lately on the relatively knew phenomenon known as SMO (“Social Media Optimisation” ) and SMM (“Social Media Marketing”). This process involves creating an enticing piece of content (the “bait” or “hook”) and creating an environment where the bait will be spread through Social Media Networks. If you don’t know what social media networks are, please read this post.

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarks are one type of social media network. Instead of adding your bookmarks to your browser bookmarks and storing them on one computer, you can store them on a social bookmarks server, so that when you change computers you bookmarks are still accessible by logging into the site. Most social bookmarking networks also allow other people to see you social bookmarks and rank them. The highest ranking bookmarks will appear on the front page of a website for all to see, meaning a large amount of traffic to a web site from the social network.

The Problem…

Remember the “add to bookmarks” button of the 90’s? They’re back in social bookmark form, and once again users of these tags aren’t considering the network behaviors of their users. There are a large number of sites that allow you create a piece of code to insert into your page to allow people to “Add to <Social Bookmark Site>”. Here is one example -http://www.evilgeniusmarketing.com/ice/tag-generator.cfm

The snippets appear on the page, people click on them and are redirected to their social bookmark site of choice. This is fine, but it is far from being optimal. Take for example the social bookmarks site Digg. Digg allows users to create a story (which is a social bookmark that others can see) which appears in a directory style page with other “Diggs”. Users who subscribe to dig can then vote for a story (“Digg it”) or against a story (“Bury it”), making the story move up or down in the position on the page. The strongest stories end up on the front page, creating a lot of exposure, visits and organic one way links for the owner of the site. So why is there a problem to creating social bookmark tags for your website so people will Digg it?

The answer is that if 1000 people visit your site and (hypothetically) all 1000 click your “Add to Digg” button, you will have 1000 different postings of the same story. Users of Digg know from experience that duplicate stories can get buried in (literally) minutes, and if you have 1000 of them chances are 99.9% of them will get buried. Additionally, as there is no indication of which story you want users to vote for, the story you might want people to vote for will also be considered a duplicate and get buried. This is the worst possible situation and it counter-productive to your Social Media Marketing efforts.

The Solution

What you really want to do is have those 1000 people vote for you story on Digg. This would make a single story stronger and move it closer to the front page meaning you are more likely to survive the “burys” of other Digg users and end up on the front page. What you need to do is go into Digg (or whatever social bookmarks network you want to promote for) and create a new story. Click on the “comments” section of your story – this is the URL you want to send your users to. The reason for this is that if you simply send your users to Digg, they will end up on the front page, where there is a significant chance they may not find your story. By linking to the “comments” for your story, you are giving them a location just for you Digg story, so they will know which one to vote for – there is a “Digg it” button in the comments section of each story. Aside from this, they can also add their comments, which they may not have done if you have directed them from a blog, so it creates user participation – it will also help them associate the Digg to your account and increase the chance of them looking at your other Diggs. More to the point, all of your Digg votes will strengthen just one story, which is the best possible situation. You can simply make a hyperlink like this -
<a href=”ThePageWhereYourCommentsAre” rel=”nofollow”><img src=”YourImageSource” mce_src=”YourImageSource” alt=”Add to Digg” /></a>

The icons are available here. It looks like this -

Digg isn’t the only network where this concept applies. If you’re going to use this method to promote your web site or multimedia, please think it through. At the least, try your own buttons to make sure what you’re doing makes sense to you and your users.

Recently I have been inundated with requests to join social media networks. If you’re already part of a network, chances are you’re receiving news feed updates and application invitations. According to HitWise, 1 in 50 internet visits were to Facebook in 2007, representing a massive marketing opportunity. Competitors MySpace and Bebo also attracted large traffic representing broad networks of people.

This post is to look at some of the features of social network sites from a marketing perspective.

Twitter:

http://twitter.com/

This is a “Presence App” which allows members to leave short messages (similar to Facebook feeds) under 140 characters. It does not allow you to make a link in post, but it does link to your profile which could include business information. Purpose is to tell people what you are doing now.

flickr

http://www.flickr.com/

Allows users to store and share photos. Owned by Yahoo. Removes links on submission. Potential to market through profile and commercial images. Hosted images tend to get shared on sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Advertising is available through Yahoo.

FaceBook

http://www.facebook.com

Allows you to reach users through news feeds and applications, as well as walls (guest-books) and direct user to user messaging. Does allow posting HOWEVER it uses a redirect from a Facebook page, so it is not beneficial to SEO. It has its own applications development framework which can access news feeds and other data. To attract interested people towards a page or cause, groups can be created. Allows the creation of business pages. Possible to advertise by age, gender and other user characteristics through an internal advertising program. You can also collect user statistics by subscribing to its business services. Facebook has recently overtaken Bebo in terms of visits.

MySpace

http://www.myspace.com

An older profile pages system like FaceBook. One of the main differences is that MySpace allows users to customize page layouts. It has its own internal advertising program, and allows for the creation of business pages and groups. It also allows linking without nofollow. Oldest and most vulnerable to spam. Allows users to publish images, videos and music. Should be part of the OpenSocial applications development platform from Google. Still maintains a majority market share in the Asia Pacific region.

Bebo

http://www.bebo.com/

Similar to MySpace. Has an open applications framework like Facebook, and allows users to customize pages. Also allows for video hosting and music channels similar to MySpace. Allows advertising using Yahoo. Was recently overtaken by Facebook in terms of traffic

Digg

http://www.digg.com/

Allows users to submit and vote for articles submitted by other uses. Users can also bury articles. Having a high ranking article means a link without nofollow on the front page of a PR8 site plus thousands of visitors. Diggs are tracked by user account. Frequently digg posts are Flickr, Youtube and other social media objects. Allows advertising through Microsoft. Users tend to bury bad posts.

YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/

Allows users to contribute and host videos. Specific interface designed for distributing videos on other sites. Allows posting of links with nofollow. Viral video marketing potential as users can search by views. Owned by Google. Allows for AdSense advertising through Google.

del.icio.us

http://del.icio.us

Social bookmarking site owned by Yahoo. Allows users to store bookmarks and provide them with descriptions and tags. Non-internal links are no-follow, but site contains a hotlist of popular items which appear on the front page. Recently there are reports that Yahoo is taking action to stop bots from other search engines including Google from indexing its content, although I can still find del.icio.us results in Google (punch site:http://del.ico.us into Google search field).

technorati

http://www.technorati.com/

Allows users to post articles into different categories. Users can then comment on articles and add or remove “authority” by voting for them. Allows links without nofollow. Posts with “Authority” appear higher up. Has its own internal advertising system.

orkut

http://www.orkut.com/

This is Google’s social media network. It allows for the creation of groups and should incorporate Open Social. It doesn’t have an advertising program yet.

These are just a few of the social media sites out there and the marketing opportunities they represent. It is interesting that while there are a lot of social media networks, they are all providing slightly different services. This means that in conisdering a social media campaign, you must conisder the audience you are catering for and the point of contact within the network.

If you have a newsletter campaign chances are you have Outlook errors on your client end. In this post we will take an in-look into Outlook and some of the problems you may have encountered. A lot of this post comes back to the clients security settings and css incompatibilities which can be worked around This post is about fixing and preventing some of those errors, and also some ways to increase website traffic using newsletter marketing.

Error 1: you have sent out an html email to a non-html recipient. As a result Outlook has marked up the content in raw text and destroyed your layout.

Solution: always write two versions of your emails – one in text and one with html. You can try and send them multi-part but don’t rely on this alone as some email browsers don’t handle it well. The best thing to do is capture whether or not your client wants to receive html formatted email or not and creating two separate lists.

Error 2: images are used for layout, so that the layout of the email is destroyed when images are automatically blocked.

Solution: like html, the solution is to always set heights of your images, and also to contain them in a div/table with a set height. I see This will prevent them from collapsing.

Error 3: your email renders fine in the browser but looks terrible when sent out.

Solution: this is a broad problem with a simple solution. Set-up two email accounts, then send the newsletter to the other account with maximum security enabled. This will allow you to see all of the errors that are likely to occur and try to correct them. It would also be a good idea to test your email in hotmail, gmail and other major web based email clients.

Error 4: you’ve sent out a newsletter or single email and you don’t know if it is actually being opened or which links are being clicked.

Solution: one of the easiest ways to check how often emails are being opened is to include a token in the email (for example a single pixel image) and monitor how often it is being downloaded. If you don’t want to do this yourself, there are hosted solutions like http://www.didtheyreadit.com/index.php/html/howitworks which will do this for you. To track whether or not hyperlinks are being followed use a URL variable like http://www.example.com/?ref=email1 that is specific to the email, and then track the page views using your website analytics. Also, remember to use absolute URLs when you send out your newsletters, otherwise users will be searching for an address relative to the root of the document. For SEO purposes, disallow this file in your robots.txt file to prevent a duplicate content penalty in search engines. Also, to increase traffic to your site it is better to have only snippets of a story in the newsletter and then have links to the rest of the story on your site.

Error 5: email continually bounces for an address

Solution: there may be many reasons for this. First of all, make sure you have a “verify email” field when you are capturing your subscriber details. You should also have a “captcha” or similar mechanism to prevent spam bots from automatically subscribing in denial of service attacks. If they are a real subscriber and have entered their details correctly it may mean that their inbox is full. In this case there is not a lot you can do.

Do you know any other Outlook work-arounds?

A while ago, trying to describe the concept of Search Engine Optimisation to a friend, I hit upon this analogy:

“It’s like Isaac Newton trying to calculate the exact force of gravity. Google’s algorithm is like gravity, and all the SEOs are like Newton, trying to figure the effect of this algorithm on their client’s sites. However, you have to imagine that God keeps screwing with Newton by changing the force of gravity on a daily basis just for the fun of it.”

In the world of Search Engine Optimisation, Google can afford to be seen as a somewhat malevolent force – toying with its index at will – seeing as (according to Hitwise) it has captured over 60% of global search volume. Its closest rival, Yahoo! accounts for less than half this amount, and thus Google has ensured a steady stream of SEOs scrambling to unravel Google’s (constantly changing) algorithm and achieve the holy trinity of: 1) high Page Rank, leading to 2) a high rank on the search engine results page (SERP) and thus 3) higher AdSense earnings.

However, this could all be set to change with the possibility of Microsoft buying out Yahoo!. Although Yahoo! has resisted such a bid in the past, Microsoft is offering shareholders a considerable premium for their shares in the struggling company, which has recently suffered job cuts and falling profits. So far discussion has mostly been regarding the effects on the SEM (Search Engine Marketing) industry. However, at this point we’ve seen little discussion on the SEO implications of this potential take-over.

The three major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft’s MSN) account for almost 95% of global search volume. As mentioned previously, Google accounts for approximately 60% of searches. However, the combined forces of Yahoo! and MSN total almost 35% of search volume, making it a worthy rival and perhaps encouraging SEOs to optimise for their search as well as – or instead of – Google’s. Microsoft has realised this potential, offering Yahoo! shareholders a hefty premium (around 60% above Yahoo!’s market value) to take control of Yahoo!’s search engine.

Yahoo! themselves have a record of buying out other search engines, including Overture, AllTheWeb, Inktomi and AltaVista. Prior to 2004, Yahoo! used Google’s index as part of their own search functions before developing their own index. Furthermore, Inktomi (one of the companies acquired by Yahoo!) once powered MSN search, until Microsoft to develop its own search engine. Both of these events happened in 2004, which happens to be just before Google released its Jagger update – this may explain some of the fundamental differences between Google and the Yahoo! and MSN search engines.

So what might we expect from an MSN-owned Yahoo! search engine results page? During our SEO research, we have found the following consistent patterns between Yahoo!, MSN and Google:

• Lower Google PR pages that would normally not appear on the front pages of Google will appear on Yahoo! and MSN. This would suggest that both sites have a different metric of quality and relevance than Google

• More emphasis on volume and less on relevance for links in Yahoo! and MSN, especially in MSN. This is possibly because Google developed its Jagger updates which actively targeted linking behaviors like mass reciprocal linking after both companies had started developing their own indexes and already had a large amount of data to base their work on

• Google will give more weight to a diverse linking profile, where inbound links are directed towards different pages within your site

• Google tends to fluctuate and update faster, and contains a lot of location specific information, for instance providing Google maps in SERPs. They have also suggested that they may include new SERP elements such as time-lines in the near future

• Yahoo! and MSN are more susceptible to aggressive link building campaigns, as Google filters links over time and may exclude (“sandbox”) domains with unnatural link patterns. Similarly, Google tends to filter a page for keywords or phrases that are used excessively

• Google gives the most value to factors such as site age and geographical factors. However, Google has also been criticized for allowing older domains with “spammy” links to rank well. As a result, it generally takes longer to rank in Google than the other search engines

Due to Google’s perceived bias towards old, established sites, it seems possible that newer sites targeting competitive search terms might abandon optimising for Google altogether and instead focus their efforts on achieving a higher rank in the MSN/Yahoo! index, thus loosening Google’s current stranglehold on the SEO and SEM market. In turn, searchers unhappy with results returned by a Google search could be confident that the MSN/Yahoo! product would return markedly different results, due to the variation in the quality and relevance metrics. If Microsoft successfully acquires Yahoo! I suspect we will see a lot of smaller, newer businesses optimising for MSN/Yahoo! rather than solely focusing on Google. This could potentially create more diversity in the search engine world as we see older, stronger businesses at the top of the Google index and newer, more active businesses gaining a greater edge in Yahoo! and MSN.

Sources:

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/bill-tancer/2006/08/us_july_search_volume_numbers.html

http://www.seobook.com/relevancy/

http://business.smh.com.au/microsoft-offers-50b-for-yahoo/20080202-1pmp.html

If you are involved in web design development or SEO, you probably know something about the meta keywords tag. Before on pre-Florida versions of the Google algorithm, this tag played an important role in SEO, allowing the search engine spider to see which keywords a page was relevant to. While these tags probably still play some role in modern algorithms (such as for Jagger), they are no longer pulling their weight in SEO the way they used to. Nonetheless, SEO companies continue to optimise for meta keywords.

But if it isn’t adding benefit it won’t hurt your site, right?

While the benefit of meta keywords may have decreased, their importance to SEO may still exist - just not necessarily in a good way for some websites. There is speculations on many forums that Google is using a Bayesian type algorithm similar to the ones used for email spam filters. Such an algorithm might incorporate the volume of meta keywords, check against the probability of them being spam versus the occurrence of those keywords in the body copy of your web page. This would then help determine if the page is spam or not based on its similarity to known spam pages.

This would make sense, as a lot of older spam pages attempting to manipulate their SERP (search engine results page) results using old methods will have excessively long meta tags with keywords that aren’t necessarily found in the body copy of pages. By comparing other websites to these sites, it would be apparent if there were an obvious attempt to manipulate the SERP through meta spam. While it all makes sense, it is difficult to improve.

Currently we are conducting an experiment to see if reducing the number of meta keywords on an older page improves its SERP result. We have broken down the keywords of the pages involved and given these priority and have removed any redundant words, repeated words or words that don’t appear on the page, and we are testing different meta keyword lengths for each of the pages. We will post the results here in the next few weeks.