Q and A: Which search engines still support the META keywords tag?

Hi KalenaQuestion

In one of your previous posts, you said to include the META keywords tag to provide those search engines that DO support it with as much information as possible about site content so they can index it correctly.

My question is: Which search engines still support the META keywords tag? I know there is the experiment conducted by Danny Sullivan to refer to, but that was posted in 2007. Just want to know what is the latest on this.

Thanks

Stephanie

Hi Stephanie

Here’s a link to the What is SEO? Beginners Guide published by SEOmoz.

According to Chapter Nine of that document, Yahoo! is the only major search engine that still supports the Meta Keywords tag and they claim not to use the content for ranking, but merely for content discovery.

Hope this clarifies things!

Kalena

———————————————-

 

Struggling to get better search rankings? Download our Free SEO Lesson. No catch!

Tell someone about Search Engine College and make some money

Mr Happy is happy

So, two things happened today that prompted this post.

The first one was an email from a student who had friends and colleagues interested in the course she was taking via Search Engine College. She wanted to know if we had an affiliate program so she could refer people in exchange for a commission if they sign up.

The second thing was a conversation I had with another mum at my son’s school who suggested that because I work on the Internet, I should “look into affiliate programs” as she had heard they are a great way to market a web site.

Both of these things made me realize that I’m obviously not very good at marketing. Because Search Engine College already HAS an affiliate program. We’ve had one for over 5 years in fact. But if one of our own students didn’t know and someone I chat to every day didn’t know, then I’m obviously not promoting it well enough. That’s a big marketing FAIL right there.

So, for those of you who didn’t already know, guess what? Search Engine College has an affiliate program.

It’s actually a pretty generous one – 15% commission on any new registrations, a USD 2 sign up bonus and a USD 50 performance bonus when your commissions reach $1,000. We pay out at USD 200, so if a student referred by you registers and pays for our Search Engine Marketer Pathway (currently priced at USD 1,495.00), your commission would be USD 224.25 and you would automatically reach the minimum payment threshold with just one sale.

Provided you are already a student, you can even use your affiliate link to purchase future courses. By doing this you will receive a 15% commission from your own orders, indirectly providing you with 15% off the purchase price of any course.

Convinced yet? Convinced but worried it will be a time suck to get going? Don’t be. Once you login, you can grab text links, banner code and other marketing tools for fast integration into your site, email signature or blog. We’ll send you step-by-step instructions if you need them, but truly, it should only take you about 5 mins to slap up a link.

Whether it makes you rich like Mr Happy in the photo here, or whether it just pays enough to cover your daily coffee is up to you. But give it a go and let me know what you think.

 

Search Engine College Newsletter Vol. 11, Issue #3

The latest issue of our Search Engine College newsletter was published this week.

This issue includes an article about marketing your business on Facebook, as well as a series of Q and A’s from this blog.

It also features a range of terrific job vacancies in the search industry and a USD 50 discount on our SEO and PPC courses, exclusive to subscribers.

Enjoy!

Is Social Media bringing back our sense of community?

voucher presented to winner of SEC training coursesI’m writing this post from an aeroplane, winging my way home from Sydney after a speaking gig and general geek catchup at Online Marketer Bootcamp today.

I’m a regular speaker at these Bootcamps and SMX shows across Australia and New Zealand, but despite being a 10 year conference veteran, I always learn something new. (By the way, the photo is me handing over a voucher for Search Engine College training to the value of $1,495 to a lucky Bootcamp attendee).

Today’s event was fairly small compared to the larger SMX-branded events, but I actually found the smaller crowd both switched-on and highly engaging. I’m not sure if it was because many of them were small to medium businesses rather than staff of large ad agencies or marketing departments, but these guys were truly interested in what we had to say and how they could use the information immediately.

Many audience members made the effort to track me down during the breaks or after the show to ask questions or simply let me know how much they took away from my session.  Quite a few of the attendees run their own companies and (like me) are responsible for all marketing, advertising and management aspects of their business. They desperately needed SEO, PPC and Social Media explained to them in 30 minutes grabs, minus the industry jargon and in real actionable terms that they could implement NOW. As impossible as that sounds, I think we actually delivered that today.

I spoke about one of my favorite subjects, How to use Twitter for Business (watch this space for a summary) and it was rewarding to see a few light bulbs go off in the crowd as they worked out how they could apply some of the case studies I presented to their own businesses, whether they were a one person company or part of a multi-national corporation.

But what really struck me about today was that the attendees were really keen to share what they knew about the subject matter (whether learned today or in the past) with other attendees. There was genuine excitement in the break out sessions where people were just completely open and honest about their own experiences in the marketing space, the successess and failures, and a willingness to share and learn that I haven’t witnessed at a conference for a couple of years.

At larger shows I’ve been to in the past, attendees tend to be quite secretive about what they do, who they work for, what agencies they use and what methodologies they employ. Not today. Today was all about connecting, engaging and sharing as much as possible. I’m convinced this is a by-product of our increasing involvement with social media. I sense that sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on are encouraging us to talk to each other again.

I overheard lots of conversations that began with “I follow you on Twitter” or “I saw your Facebook post the other day” or “I heard you ask for information about X – here’s a link that might help”. Despite the generational hype that we have lost our ability to communicate without a modem, I actually think our sense of community is returning.

Bring it on I say.

Q and A: Which keyword research tools do you recommend for Yahoo and Bing?

QuestionGood day,

I’m not using MS Excel, but instead running another spreadsheet program on my computer.

It sounds as if I cannot run the Microsoft Advertising Intelligence tool to perform MS/Yahoo/Bing keyword research if I don’t have MS Excel. Is this correct? Is there an alternate tool that does not require MS Excel?

Which keyword research tools do you recommend be used to perform keyword research exclusively for Microsoft/Yahoo/Bing?

Providing a couple of names of keyword research tools & their urls would be mighty helpful.

Thank you,

Wendy

Hi Wendy

It’s true that MS Advertising Intelligence is a tool designed for MS Excel, however you can download the .xls file and open it with non-MS programs such as Google Docs and Open Office (for Linux).

There are also plenty of other KW research tools around to help you find keywords for Bing (Microsoft) and Yahoo. Try these for size:

MS adCenter Labs – Keyword Research Tools

Search Engine Wiki – Keyword Research Category

Hope this helps!

Kalena

———————————————-

Struggling to get better search rankings? Download our Free SEO Lesson. No catch!