Disclaimer: I am not an SEO expert and have never claimed to be one!
We have previously seen why SEO is important for a blog and also discussed about the growing challenges for SEO experts. Both these posts were written by guest bloggers – Amit & Mohsin, who have sufficient knowledge and experience in SEO activities.
My knowledge is limited to the experience I have gained while experimenting with TechPP over the past year and a half. When I started blogging on TechPP (in Sep 2008) I had not even heard of the term “Search Engine Optimization”. It was during December 2008, when I registered myself for SEO Challenge competition at Dollarshower ,I got an opportunity to explore SEO. I made considerable progress during that time and eventually ended being the runner-up there!
A year down the line, TechPP is considered amongst the best technology blogs with more than 5k RSS subscribers and 1.75 million page views per month. I attribute a minor part of this success to my SEO efforts.
If you are wondering, why I am writing about SEO all of a sudden, a blogger friend accused posted that TechPP resorts to Title and Meta Tag stuffing! Oopss! That one almost sounds like Blackhat! The post made me sit back and cross check if I am doing anything wrong. This post is result of that small analysis I did.
Understanding Title and Meta Tag Stuffing
According to SEOGlossary, Meta Tag stuffing is defined as
Repeating keywords in the meta tags and using meta keywords that are unrelated to the site’s content.
So, what is a keyword then?
a word that a search engine user might use to find relevant web page(s). If a keyword doesn’t appear anywhere in the text of your web page, it’s highly unlikely your page will appear in the search results
Fine. How about Meta Keywords then?
a meta tag hidden in the HTML that lists keywords relevant to the page’s content. Because search engine spammers have abused this tag so much, this tag provides little to no benefit to your search rankings. Of the major search engines, only Yahoo! still pays any attention to the meta keywords tag
Notice the bolded phrases above. Meta keywords (or meta tags) are no more considered by Google, so stuffing or no stuffing should not impact your search engine performance!
Coming back to the original post which alerted its readers to avoid Title and meta tag stuffing by giving the example of TechPP, here is what it had to say –
Interesting, isn’t it?! He is right in saying that Title tag stuffing and meta tag stuffing is harmful and we shouldn’t do, but he is wrong in picking up TechPP as an example. Why? Because, if you see the source code of any post, there are no keywords unrelated to the site content. Yes, I do append tags to the title, but they all are related and restricted to 16 keywords (max).
Let us take the example of my previous post. Here is its title –
<?title>Hilarious Collection of Photoshop Cartoons [Geeky Fun] - cartoons based on photoshop, funny photoshop, geek humor, geeky fun, photoshop cartoon, photoshop cartoons, TimePass - Technically Personal!<?/title>
and meta keywords
<?meta name="keywords" content="cartoons based on photoshop, funny photoshop, geek humor, geeky fun, photoshop cartoon, photoshop cartoons, TimePass" />
It is true that, irrespective of how many tags I use as meta keywords, they are ignored by Google, but is it harmful? I don’t think so. I am neither misleading Google nor manipulating it in any way.
End Note
I am very much open for inputs from the SEO experts and would love to be proved wrong and happy to correct myself. But I believe Google is smart enough to catch hold of scammers and not so foolish to send millions of users towards my site every month! Mind you, the site is year and a half old and page rank has never ever dropped before. So 2 questions before I end
1) What exactly is Title & meta tag stuffing?
2) Are they even relevant in today’s SEO?
Over to you!
Update:
Useful related posts:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/avoid-keyword-stuffing/