In case you haven’t heard (and where have you been), meta tags are dead. Apparently no search engine gives meta tags any kind of clout since very early this decade. People have been declaring the death of Meta Tags for years but apparently they are about as hard to kill as IE6.
I don’t consider myself an SEO expert (or guru), but I do sell specialized my SEO knowledge.
Don’t get me wrong, Title Tags are a vital part of any website, but declaring the extent of your SEO skills to be the inclusion of Meta tags is weak. Personally, I include the keywords into my posts and pages. I even include automatically generated tags. But I don’t go around stating that I am a Search Engine Optimizer because I know how to use Meta Tags. Honestly, they shouldn’t be teaching Meta Tags in curriculum these days at all.
Just give me your money
If your Internet consultant wants to submit your site to search engines – Fire them! Why would anyone want to charge you for something that takes 5 seconds and does absolutely nothing. When a site is built correctly, search engines will be attracted to it.
Pfft… I scoff at you
If your Internet consultant guarantees you results – they better offer a double your money back guarantee or you should steer clear. Any Internet marketer who claims they can guarantee you instant results that last forever are out of their mind. I have been able to get within the top ten results of Google within 4 minutes of starting a campaign but without running consistent campaigns that content will disappear over time.
Keyword Stuffing = Google Sandbox
If your Internet Consultant thinks that adding a ton of “keywords” at the bottom of your website is Search Engine Optimization, please slap them upside the head for me. I would hate to be blind using a screen reader and trying to figure out why there are a million towns listed on the bottom of your website. Search Engines utilize the same logic and get confused too.
There are more debates over what can be considered correct and what can be considered wrong, but it all boils down to a few simple steps:
- Build your site correctly from the beginning
- make sure its comfortable for a human to use it
- Develop it so it’s easy for a search engine to read it
- Create good content that reads well
- Keep adding fresh content to your site weekly
Act as if Google doesn’t exist, get the word out the old fashioned way using the Internet as your wire and your site as your home and you can go a long way.
Can you identify other ways that people misuse the term SEO in their skill set? Please tell me I’m not the only one annoyed by “SEO Gurus”.
