SEO Myths and Facts 2008: How to Use Meta Tags

There is so much information floating around the net on SEO that most blog owners don’t know what to do. Google changes their rules so often, that it is easy for people to become confused and frustrated. This is the goal of most of webmasters hoping to sell SEO books for $50. The simple truth is, you don’t need to pay $50 for an ebook. There are excellent books in the bookstore for $15.99 that will tell you 10x more information.

I upgraded my SEO marketing last summer. However, I have recently learned a bit about Google’s most recent changes. I’ve been posting about the new rules for Page Rank. You’ll notice that I dated this post. I want you to know that in 2009, you need to move farther through my blog and learn the new rules. Things will change. Google changed their rules twice in 2007 sending many high ranking blogs and websites into the ‘ban’ bin permanently, and rising many small blogs to PR4.

I hope this will help.

Meta Tag Density

The whole concept of meta tag density is so old that it is pre millennia, in the days of ‘meta tag search engines.’ There hasn’t been one of those dinosaurs for years. Today, meta tags are used to help match Ads to web page content, rank websites, and organizing searches.
Google currently penalizes any blog web page with more than 5% keyword density. Other search engines penalize more than 3%. That means if you use a keyword more than 5 times per 100 words, you risk your article being dropped from searches.

It is more important where the keyword appears, than how many times it appears. A keyword in a link that is found within content, or a title is more valued than a keyword inside an article. It is also important to remember that search engines only read 150 or so words. That means, unless you use ‘sub headings’ every 150 – 200 words, the search engines never read the entire article.

Tip: Meta tags that do help are found in the blog/web page templates. This is fairly easy for websites such as blogger and Wordpress. The web is full of tutorials that will help.

Meta Tags in Titles and Sub Titles

Using the correct keywords in a page title promotes higher rankings, and increases the click-through from PayPerClick ads. The following article titles show good title examples and bad ones.

How to Write an Article

Earn One Thousand Dollars Writing Articles

The Art of Writing Articles

The objective is to ‘think’ like someone who wants to learn how to write articles. If you want to learn how to do something, you’d never type The Art of Writing Articles into your computer’s browser. Most of us would type in example one. That means example one will rank higher.

However, it is also important to use keywords in the sub titles every 150 – 200 words. Search engines see sub headings as PAGE BREAKS. This mean that each section is a new page.

Writing articles in Word lets ‘non HTML’ buffs add heading titles. Just use ‘change styles, or the heading 1, heading 2, heading 3 titles. One of the benefits of writing in word and using copy and paste to transfer an article to a web is that the Heading titles can be resized to ‘normal.’ Most people do not like the different sizes of titles. Adjusting the font size offers web writers the best of both worlds.