The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

You hear it every day. Some SEO says you have to write a keyword-based meta description to make sure the search engines use your content in the SERPs and not their own. OK, here’s the truth: You don’t need a meta description and you never did.

You first need to understand what the meta description is for.

Its purpose is to get the searcher to click on a search result and visit the page. Therefore, it needs to have a strong call to action. But does it need a keyword in it to be successful?

Yes. And no.

Understand that Google sometimes uses the meta description and sometimes not. Your web page could be returned for any number of search terms. You might target one search term and do it well enough to rank No. 1 for that search term. Good for you. But there will also be other search queries your page could rank for. A web page could rank for 500 or more search queries on any given day. Google will NOT use your meta description for every single one of those search queries.

Google will take text from a page itself to use as meta description based on the search query at that moment. It’s a split second decision. If your meta description best suits the SERP result, it will be used; otherwise, Google will use on-page text.

So when then do you need a meta description? Why not let Google choose the SERP snippet for every query?

SEOs fall on every side of this issue. Some say write a keyword-rich meta description every time. Some say don’t do it at all. Others say do it sometimes and sometimes not. I say you have to pick your path and do what is right for each page of your website.

Most times, a keyword-based meta description with a call to action targeting your primary keyword is a good thing as long as you understand that other search queries may have a different search snippet taken from your page. You can’t control every variable. Don’t try.

Have you ever checked your referral logs or analytics and saw a search query that someone found your site for and wondered why you ended up ranking for that search term? Have you ever seen that search query show up more than once in your referral logs and analytics reports? If you’re like me, I’m sure you have.

What happened?

SEO Theory’s Michael Martinez says this.

Search engines don’t stop ranking your pages at the end of your list of carefully chosen keywords. If they find expressions your page is relevant to that you didn’t think of, they’ll give you some exposure you didn’t count on. The difference between a real long tail strategy and a faux long tail strategy is the absence of popular head terms in your search goals.

What most business owners, and even a lot of SEOs, don’t understand is that the magic that happens in search happens when the searcher enters a search query in the search query box and clicks the Search button. It does NOT happen when you optimize your web page.

So what does that mean exactly?

Well, you can optimize your pages endlessly, do all the keyword research you can think of, and build link after link after link with the very best anchor text possible and still get traffic for search queries you didn’t think of. That happens because search engine robots are looking for content that matches search queries. They are not looking for search queries that match your content.

That’s an important distinction. But what does it mean in terms of search? Here’s what I think it means:

Quit chasing keywords. Instead, chase the customers that are important to your business – the ones most likely to buy your products and services. You cannot guess every search query those customers will use to find you on the Web. What you can do is write great content that attracts the people you want to do business with. Then promote that content where those people hang out.

Funny how so many people are willing to tell you how to optimize a web page but they can’t do it themselves. They’ve read the book, they know all the right things to say, but where are their rankings?

They don’t have any.

Real SEO is not about chasing keywords. Keywords are important, yes. But if you can’t rank a web page without doing keyword research, then you probably aren’t doing your SEO right. Stop it.

Search engine optimization is about creating opportunities. It’s not about following 10-year-old advice as if it is today’s recipe.

So now the big question is, How do you create opportunities with search engine optimization? Glad you asked.

What world class copywriters do is study copywriting techniques. They write headlines that grab readers’ attentions. Then they write content that people want to read. And they do it so well that you wish you had written it. On any given day a good online copywriter can get their content to rank for hundreds of keywords. They write content that matters.

Instead of chasing keywords, try instead to write as keywords don’t matter. Don’t just pick a popular phrase that a lot of other people have written about and write a post about it. Instead, write a post about something that people in your niche want to know about. Write it without worrying about what keyword to use.

I’m not saying keywords are not important. What I am saying is that bad content can’t be saved by keywords. Learn to write good content before you try to spruce it up with keywords.

Most web pages that suffer from mediocre search rankings can have those rankings increased with just a few simple tweaks. In most cases all it takes is 3-5 small improvements that take less than 5 minutes each to fix. Here are 5 very small web page improvements you can make to better your website’s SEO in less than 30 minutes.

• Alt tags – Got a photo or image that you are adding to your page? Include an alt tag. Make sure that your alt tag uses your primary keyword for that page. The alt tag is to notify the search engines that the photo is there and what it is about. It will definitely increase your SEO to have alt tags on all your images.
• Inline JavaScript – This kills so many web pages that it’s not even funny, especially if the JavaScript is at the top of the web page’s code. Take that inline JavaScript and put it into an external file, then call it into your web pages with a single line of code. That alone should increase your web visibility because search engines don’t crawl JavaScript and you want to watch your code-to-text ratio.
• Unique meta descriptions – If you have two or more web pages with the same or similar meta descriptions, rewrite the meta descriptions until they are all unique.
• Keywords in subheads – Subheads are often overlooked in pages with lots of text, but if you add subheads every third or fourth paragraph and ensure you have your keywords in those subheads, then that will go a long way to optimizing your web pages.
• Optimized meta title – Like the meta description, a unique meta title can do wonders for your on-page SEO. Don’t just take your page’s headline and make it your meta title. Instead, write a unique meta title using the same keyword that is in your headline.

If you follow these 5 simple steps, you should find your on-page SEO improving your search rankings almost immediately.

When filling out your social media profiles, should you use keywords? I don’t see why not. In fact, I would encourage you to do some keyword research prior to writing your profiles and using the most popular and profitable keywords within your profile.

I’m not talking about spamming here. I’m not talking about excessive use of your keywords or inappropriate use of them either. I am talking about effective marketing.

Your social media profile on most of the social networks are crawlable and likely will be indexed in Google. So why not use your keywords? If those keywords are important to you in search, then they should be important to you in your social media profile.

For instance, let’s say you are filling out a LinkedIn profile and are the creative director in a theatre. What keywords would you use to describe what you do? Here are a few:

• Creative director
• Theatre
• Entertainment
• Media

If a particular job description entails the use of a specific keyword, then you want that keyword used in your social media profiles. You want to use it on any social media where you network with other professionals. So, if you use Twitter and LinkedIn for professional social networking but not Facebook, then you don’t need to worry about using your keywords for Facebook – but you do for the other two networks. If you decide that you want to use Facebook for professional networking, then use your keywords on Facebook.

Social networking is not an exact science. But it does impact search in some ways. Use your keywords.

Do you know the definition of content? I can tell you this much – it isn’t fluff.

Fluff is that soft white stuff that some kids like to spread on their bread like butter. It’s creamy, has no substance, and isn’t particularly nutritional. It has little, if any, health benefits. The upside is it isn’t harmful to your health either.

Content, however, is just the opposite.

• It’s meaty
• It’s substantive
• It’s vitally important to the intellectual or mental health of the person reading it
• It improves the reader’s life in some way

Many online content writers have a tendency to write to the keyword. They’ll find a word they want to rank highly for in the search engines and focus their content on that keyword ending up with nothing but a big bucket of fluff.

Now, I’d like to say that there is nothing wrong with keywords. We use them all the time. But if your content is so full of your keyword that it ceases to provide intellectual stimulation or anything substantive to the reader, then you might want to scale back on the keywords and add a little meat. Make your content communicate something extraordinary.

Content can take many forms. It can be online website content, dynamic blog or widgetized content, social media content. It can be viral, video, make use of vivid imagery, contextual, or a combination of these. The important thing is that your content be valuable to someone.

If your content doesn’t provide value, then it’s fluff. Take out the fluff and add some value. That’s how you build online content.

Perhaps the most important search engine optimization practice that any webmaster can employ is the use of keywords. These are the basic building blocks of SEO. That doesn’t mean that crap copy with keywords stuffed in them will help your pages rank better or get you more customers. Good content must shine like a diamond. But these keyword practices are all guaranteed to make your diamond-studded content increase in value day by day.

1. Page Headlines – This is different than your page title. It’s the content header at the top of your page that is visible to humans and to search engines. Place your keyword phrase in that page headline. For instance, this blog post is headed “7 Keyword Optimization Strategies That Work All The Time.”
2. Long Tail Keywords – Long tail keywords are keywords that are narrower than your main keyword. For instance, if you sell hunting knives, it isn’t enough to use “knives” as your keyword. Narrow it down with long tail phrases like “Trail Master hunting knives” and “Laredo Bowie hunting knives.”
3. Keyword Variants – Not everyone uses the same phrase when they conduct a search. Some people will use “car lot” and others will use “automobile dealer.”
4. Synonyms – What words can you think of that are synonymous with your keywords? Use those in your content as well.
5. Keyword Stemming – Stemming is a practice that involves adding letters and syllables to key phrases. For instance, stems for the root word “run” would include “running,” “runner,” “runners,” etc.
6. Permalinks – Every web page has its own address. This is typically called a Uniform Resource Locator, or URL. It consists of your main website address followed by a forward slash (/) and the unique folder name for the page. It might look like this: websitename.com/individualpagename. You should your primary keyword phrase in that individual page name.
7. Semantic Language – Search engines today don’t need keywords to know what a page is about. If you mention “Ford,” “Chevrolet,” and “GMC” in your content, then they know your content is about cars.

These are not the only keyword optimization strategies that work, but they are important ones. Write great content and optimize it for search.

Talk to five SEOs and you’re likely to hear five different answers on any particular question involving search engine optimization. But for now, let’s talk about keywords. Are they necessary?

I don’t think there’s an SEO alive who would say “No” to that question, but why not? We live in a day of semantic language indexing. The search engines rank pages based on ideas, not keyword stuffing. In other words, if your on-page content is clearly about how to change a light bulb and you don’t use the phrase “light bulb” but two times in your article, you could still rank for that key phrase. It’s all about quality.

So keywords aren’t important then, right?

I’d say that’s a wrong assumption to make. While semantic language indexing rules the day, keywords are not discounted. I believe you should still focus your content on keywords, but don’t fixate on any one keyword. That is, use a little semantic language markup.

Are Keyword Tags Necessary?

One area where there is a lot of dispute over the use of keywords is in the keywords meta tag. There are two main ideas regarding the use of this tag.

1. Not necessary. The not necessary camp argues that keyword tags aren’t necessary because none of the major search engines look at them. While this is true, some smaller search engines still do consider this meta tag; and the major search engines are constantly tweaking their algorithms so you never know when they may start considering keywords meta tags again.
2. It doesn’t hurt. The rest of the SEO community falls into the “it doesn’t hurt” camp. Because of the two reasons mentioned above, they argue that it doesn’t hurt to use the tag. Someday, it may help.

It never hurts to employ a strategy that you won’t get penalized for. I would not dispense with keywords altogether. What you don’t want to do is stuff your content with keywords as that might get your pages banned, penalized, or de-indexed. Just use a little common sense in your search engine optimization practices.

There is a misconception among many search engine optimization specialists that SEO must be a focus of content or the content just isn’t good. The truth is, great content and great SEO compliment each other. They can co-exist without hurting each other.

The key to this SEO philosophy is in the use of keywords and links. Keywords are the fuel in every search engine optimization strategy. You don’t want to overdo it, but you must do it.

What does that mean, exactly?

Keywords are a matter of targeting the right phrases for the right audience. If you are trying to reach people who purchase automobiles, then you have to target the right key phrases that attract automobile buyers. If you sell Ford vehicles specifically, then target your phrases to people who buy Ford vehicles. Sounds like a no-brainer, right?

It is, but you’d be surprised at how many SEOs target the wrong keywords for their audiences.

When it comes to links, you want your links to compliment your keyword phrases. They shouldn’t dominate. Anything in moderation is better than the same thing in overdose. Use links that compliment your keywords by incorporating the keywords into the link anchor text and pointing them to relevant pages on your website. Title attributes can also compliment your anchor text.

By complimentary title attributes, I don’t necessarily mean repeating your anchor text key phrase. I mean use a phrase that compliments it and is a more nuanced way of using your important keywords.

SEO is not a science. It certainly isn’t rocket science. Your first concern should be in creating great content. Make the SEO compliment the content.

Are you familiar with the term “long tail” in relation to SEO and website optimization? If not, here’s the lowdown.

Think of a many-headed hydra. In Greek legend, the hydra was a monster with nine heads. Those heads were quite dangerous. If one got you, it hurt. And of course, if you cut one off, then another one grew to replace it. The Greek hero Hercules had to fight a hydra one time – you know, mythologically speaking.

Many search engine optimizers approach SEO like they are fighting a hydra. They focus on the head. But if you focus on the head, even if you defeat one (that is, manage to take over its search engine ranking), there are two more ready to sprout up in place and challenge you to work harder. This type of SEO is very difficult to beat. You can go after the most popular search phrases and risk fighting more and more powerful and dangerous heads (competitors) or wise up and go for the long tail instead.

The long tail in SEO are the less popular phrases that can be just as powerful yet easier to defeat. That hydra had a tail. It was long. And it could sweep around and knock you off your feet. But if you managed to cut it off, nothing grew in its place.

Long tail keywords are like that hydra tail. They’re easier to defeat even as powerful as they are. Knock your competition off the pedestal and there aren’t as many competitors there to try and replace them. It’s easier to win.

SEO copywriters always run the risk of making two big mistakes:

• Doing too much
• Doing too little

And I mean this with regard to the nuts and bolts of SEO – keywords, links, etc.

Doing Too Much

SEOs who do too much usually end up stuffing their content with keywords or going hog wild in building links. If they would just spend some time writing natural language content, they wouldn’t have to worry about stuffing their content with keywords and links. Nothing beats good SEO like saying what you intended to say and just getting on with it.

That said, it’s important to pay attention to your keywords. Would you write about rotating your tires without using phrases like “tire rotation” and “wheel?” Of course not.

Use the language you would normally use and your SEO should be fine.

Doing Too Little

On the flip side, I think you can do too little. That is, you don’t employ any keyword usage at all. Why would you do that?

If you’re afraid of being tagged as a spammer, it’s probably because you’ve been tagged as a spammer before. Don’t worry about it. Just write good content that answers people’s questions. When you do that, be sure you write in the language of your audience. That’s the best SEO you’ll ever employ.

Every once in a while I read a blog post or hear some SEO somewhere, or a social media marketer, start proclaiming that SEO is dead or keywords are useless. But I notice that they have pretty well optimized web pages themselves.

The question comes to mind, What are their motives?

Maybe they’re trying to create a ruse to throw other SEOs off track and stop optimizing their web pages. Or maybe they’re sincere and misguided. Or maybe they just have some brilliant insight into the future direction of SEO. Whatever the case, I’m pretty sure they’re wrong about keywords. They are not useless nor are they out of fashion.

Keyword stuffing is useless. Keyword density is WAY out of fashion. But keyword-optimized web pages are still very much en vogue.

The search engines still return results for search queries that match keyword-optimized on-page content. As long as they do, keywords will still serve a purpose. But managing your keywords in a way that search engines will reward them is paramount. Otherwise, you may not rank as you think you should or you may find yourself at odds with search engine policies. Both scenarios are bad.

Don’t listen to the naysayers who say that SEO is dead or keywords are useless. Maybe some day they will be, but that day is not today.

More important than keyword density, more important than ensuring you put your keywords in all the right spots, and more important than inbound anchor text with a solid keyword pick is your keyword selection to begin with. Of course, I’m not talking about whether or not you choose keywords. I’m talking about making sure you choose the right keywords for your business.

Keyword selection is about more than picking the right keyword for the best search engine optimization practices. It’s just as much about choosing the right keywords for your business.

For instance, if you sell red widgets, then you would not want to optimize your web pages for the term “yellow widgets.” You would attract all the wrong customers. But I see businesses doing this all the time. More often, I see businesses targeting a generalized keyword when drilling down to a nichier, narrower keyword would deliver better targeted traffic.

Here’s another for instance. If you sell industrial construction materials, optimizing your website for the keyword phrase “construction materials” is too broad. You want to narrow it to “industrial construction materials.” This will eliminate anyone looking for construction materials to build a house. You want to attract people looking for a specific type of construction materials.

Keyword selection is very important. Make sure that you are not only optimizing your web pages for keywords related to your niche, but that they are the right keywords for your business.

Is it possible to improve search engine rankings overnight? Let’s say you have a few keywords that are attracting search engine traffic, but you know that you rank at the bottom of page one or on page two for those keywords. What should you do?

Consider that about 90% of searchers click on page one results. Also consider that more than 80% of searchers click on one of the top three listings on page one. It makes sense to try to increase your rankings for those keywords that are moderately successful.

What you want to do is identify those keywords that are sending you traffic but whose search engine rankings are below the top three positions on page one yet not further down than page three. Got that list? Now, start a link building campaign that focuses on building solid anchor text links for those specific keywords.

This process should take no more than a month or two. If you build good links – that is, focus on links from high authority web pages, use specific anchor text, stay away from spam in any form, and stay consistent and steady – then you can increase your search engine rankings in just a short time.

Link building is a time consuming process, but it is well worth the effort for the pay load on the back end. It won’t happen overnight, but it can happen.

Adding a blog to your small business website can increase your SEO benefits tremendously. There are a number of benefits you can receive from a company blog, but these three SEO benefits are very distinct benefits you receive if you blog often and blog using the right strategy.

1. Increased search engine rankings – Every blog post is treated like its own web page. That means every blog post has the potential to rank for your keywords on its own merit.
2. More opportunities to rank – Every blog post you write invites the search engines back to your website to recrawl it. They will not come back to your site again until it is updated. Because your static site gets updated less often, you should have a blog that you update on a regular basis so that you can have your website crawled often.
3. More navigational links – Because you can link from your blog to your main website, you can build more links. Those links will serve as important navigational tools for your visitors, but the search engines like links too. The anchor text you use for those links can push your web pages up further in the search engines in addition to the SEO benefits you get from the content.

A blog is one of the best SEO tools available for your website. If you don’t have one yet, now is the time to consider one.

If you were to use your entire keyword list for a natural search marketing campaign, it would cost you a fortune. And you might spend a year or two learning which keywords are performing best and which ones are more profitable. We can do that in a month or less with pay-per-click advertising.

By using PPC to test your keywords, we can group those keywords into tight target groups and test them against different ads and landing pages. Using a multivariate approach helps us to gain a better understanding of your keyword effectiveness.

Let’s take an example: If you have three landing pages and five ads that can be rotated to test your keyword list and find that you have one keyword that performs well consistently on all ad and landing page combinations, then we know that’s a strong keyword. But if another keyword consistently fails to achieve any meaningful results, then we know it’s a weak keyword. We can strike it from your list and not waste our time creating content for natural search.

This approach saves you money and time. You will not have to wait a year to determine that certain keywords are ineffective for natural search and the small investment in PPC you make to determine that will save you tons of money on the back end.

If you are a real estate agent or broker, you might feel more comfortable getting your SEO advice from another real estate agent or broker, or from the National Association of Realtors. That might not be such a good idea, however.

Think about this: Would you caution your real estate clients against getting real estate advice from anyone other than a real estate agent? The reason is obvious, isn’t it?

The NAR recently posted SEO advice for real estate agents in an article on its website. The problem isn’t so much in the general advice NAR gives, but in the specific advice.

For example, its six recommended SEO practices include:

• Write better page titles
• Broadcast your links
• Use keywords generously
• Reword outgoing links
• Develop a site map
• Tweet about it

That’s a mediocre list, at best. What’s not on that list and should be are: 1) list your site on local directories; 2) claim it on Google Local, Bing Local, and Yahoo! Local; 3) and start a blog. But the nitty-gritty details of these bullet points isn’t much to be desired either.

For example, hear what NAR has to say about keywords:

Your main keywords should appear at least 10 to 13 times per 700 words on a page, says Mark Menzella, who runs RE/Advantage, a real estate Web design company in Fairfield, N.J.

In industry speak, this concept is called “keyword density.” The problem is, keyword density is a huge myth. It doesn’t work. There is no optimal number of times a keyword should appear on any web page. That’s because the search engines use almost 200 criteria for determining where pages rank for a specific keyword.

Let’s look at what NAR says about tweeting:

“Now that tweets are indexed in Google, Twitter has become an important part of SEO strategy,” says Misty Lackie of Go Smart Solutions, a technology consulting firm in Grover Beach, Calif. So get a Twitter account if you don’t already have one, and create useful tweets that happen to include your business keywords and links to your site.

Honestly, I’ve never seen much SEO benefit from tweeting. Keywords in your tweets don’t help you much in terms of your website’s SEO. Even anchor text in your links from Twitter are low grade since those links are no-follow links. That’s not to say that Twitter is a bad marketing tool. Rather, it’s a highly effective marketing tool for getting you some local exposure, but for SEO, it’s not a must-have tool.

Your best bet for good SEO advice is not to rely on industry professionals within real estate. You should get your real estate advice from real estate agents and brokers, but get your SEO advice from professional SEO consultants.

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Kick your PPC campaign off with some basic keyword research. We’ll search and find the best keywords for your business based on your landing page, your goals, your competition, and past marketing initiatives.

With PPC marketing, you can test your keywords before you use them in your organic marketing. It’s a great way to test new keywords and keyword groups. Why spend countless hours building landing pages and promoting them through social media and articles when you aren’t 100% confident of the keywords you are using? You can be confident in less than 24 hours just by testing them in PPC ads.

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A good marketing research program will help you to understand who your demographic audience is. Don’t be surprised to see that youths and young adults are high up on the list. They have taken to the online world faster than any other generation, and they have brought with them a whole new language.

The language of our youth is not just the abbreviated or truncated language that evolved from SMS through to Twitter and is now common on Facebook. They have also brought with them a new language. They have brought with them the art of taking two words and combining them into one – and those words are starting to stick in our day-to-day language.

Search engine optimization is based in part on your choice of keywords and keyword phrases. The time will soon come when keyword selection will necessitate diving into this new language. John Jantsch on WebProNews suggests that SEO programs should be concentrating on these issues for mobile search. I agree, however, why stop at mobile search?

If you are communicating with this generation of users through social media sites, you will no doubt have come across this new use of our language.  By targeting your keywords, onsite content and social media conversations using this language, you may just find there is a whole new group of potential customers that you can tap into.

The Internet is moving forward quickly. We need to move forward as well, upadating and replacing equipment as and when we need them, while keeping an eye on who our customers are. It’s an interesting world with an interesting language taking over the Internet.

If you are a new business just setting up then you are going to find it tough. There’s no point mincing words – search is quickly becoming saturated, especially when it comes to short one- or two-word keywords, and ranking highly quickly is just not going to happen. It’s not all doom and gloom, however. If you work your way methodically you can succeed and, over time, you can start to make a serious impact in search results – it all depends on your approach.

Chasing highly competitive keywords is the quickest way to bankruptcy. Your competitors have had a big head start on you and their search engine optimization programs will make it much harder for you to compete. If you are results oriented, then you can start to make an impact. It’s really a very simple process on paper (not so simple in application). What is the process?

Keywords – Finding keywords that are still competitive. They may not receive zillions of searches each day, but that factor alone makes them attractive.

Optimizing – Optimizing your web site for those keywords is the next step. This includes all the usual onsite and offsite factors.

Analyzing – Now comes the results orientated process – are those keywords starting to rank; are they delivering traffic; and are they converting into sales? If they are, you are on the right track; if not, why not? – this is the real analysis process.

More Keywords – Once you are starting to see results, it’s time to go back and take another look at those keywords. Your first list contained keywords with low competition – it’s now time to start attacking keywords with a little more competition – then optimize, then analyze. It’s a process that never stops and, over time, you may well be in a position to attack those top-of-the-chain keywords.

The key to succeeding in a highly competitive market is to start by attacking the lesser quality keywords – running a strong search engine optimization campaign – then steadily building on that base. In two, three or perhaps four years time, you will look back and be amazed at far you have traveled. Build your business on results rather than trying to be number one overnight – it’s not going to happen.