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There's been some discussion recently on some of the SEO web sites about whether or not Bing is back to using the META keywords tag in it's ranking algorithm. The answer is yes.

I know, someone out there is saying, "Hold on. You can't have a yes answer to an either / or question." That isn't exactly true - at least not in this case. The answer just happens to be "yes."

Thanks to keyword stuffing, most search engines, Bing included, have long since stopped using the META keyword tag a a signal that directly gives weight to the authoritativeness of a web page. Some SEOs, myself included, still add META keywords because it helps with AdSense targeting. When Bingbot comes along and sees META keywords in the HTML, it looks at them and says, "Oh, nice - this page uses META keywords. And they seem to be in sync with the on page content. Good for them" and it moves on. In this example, the META keywords have no positive effect on my page's rankings. Having them there doesn't help me, but it don't hurt me either. They're just kind of there.

But what if I stuffed that META keyword tag with, say 20 keyword terms? Bingbot would look at that page and say, "Wait a minute, this page is using way too many keywords. They're probably trying to game the system. I don't think this page is very reliable." In this case, the use of keywords may have a negative effect on how your page is percieved in concert with other signals. And how do I know this? Let's just say I have a source.

As the search engines keep trying to tell us, it really is all about the content.

On April 12th, 2011, Google release the second version of its Panda algorithm update. Like the first one, this one is designed to improve the quality of Google's search results by eliminating (or drastically reducing) the lower quality content commonly attributed to "content farms."

So what is a content farm?

In some respects, the definition of a content farm is like the definition of pornography: you know it when you see it. The first iteration of the Panda update was supposed to filter a lot of low quality content out of the SERPs. The trouble is, it didn’t work. (At least not the way the engineers thought it would.) So Google went back in, tweaked the algorithm a bit, and released Panda II.

This iteration is closer to the mark. According to Hitwise, Demand Media owned sites like Answerbag.com, LiveStrong.com and eHow.com all showed significant decreases in outbound traffic from Google (80%, 57% and 29% respectively). AssociatedContent.com dropped 61% and Yahoo Answers dropped 13%. Clearly Google is on the right track, but knowing how Matt Cutt's works - Matt is the head of Google's Web Spam team - his team is undoubtedly trying to tweak the algorithm even more. Search Quality is what Matt’s team lives for, and they take that mission very, very seriously. (My money is on a Panda III update before the end of the summer.)

Does having a lot of advertising on the page make me a content farm?

No. Contrary to some rumors, the amount of advertising on a page does not in and of itself scream "content farm" to Google. While it’s true that the number of ads on a page is a signal Google uses when assessing whether a site fits their definition of a content farm or not, it’s not the only signal.

While last year’s Caffeine update gave Google the ability to add new web pages to its index in real time, the less-discussed MayDay update added an additional 70 signals to its search algorithm. That brought the total number of signals Google checks as a way of determining relevancy and authoritativeness to 200. So, if you look solely at the number of ads on a page you would have a distorted view of the value of that signal. You have to look at other factors:

• How much content is on the page? Are the articles short or are they longer, more scholarly pieces?
  
• Is the content authoritative? Does the article provide new information, cite outside sources or is it simply a rewrite a press release?
  
• Has the content been authored by someone who are themselves considered authoritative?
  
• Do other authoritative sites link to the page?
  
• Do users typically come to the page and bounce off of it quickly or do they stay and read the information?
  
• Does the page (or site) feature in conversations happening in the blogosphere or Twitterverse?
  
• Does the page load quickly, or does it take a long time?
  

More to the point, lots of good sites have ads on them and lots of good sites have LOTS of ads on them. For most sites – including Google – advertising is how they pay the bills. Sure, the Wall Street Journal is subscription based, and so is the NY Times, but the revenue they derive from subscriptions is minimal and neither is going to forgo it’s advertising any time soon. The existence of ads – even a fair amount of them – in and of itself isn’t going to get you thrown into the content farm bucket. It’s what’s between the ads that counts.

The bottom line is the same as it’s always been: If you’ve got great, informative and authoritative content, your site will continue to do well.

Eric

Google’s been getting beat up by the Press recently and they weren’t happy about it. Blekko fired the first salvo. They publicly announced that they’d banned Demand Media’s sites from their search results because they felt content farms didn’t provide useful information to searchers. Then, Matt Cutts (who heads Google’s Web Span Team and is responsible for the quality of the search results) gets publicly embarrassed by articles in mainstream media about JC Penny and Forbes using black hat SEO techniques to boost their rankings. Add to that the publicity surrounding Demand Media’s IPO and Yahoo’s acquisition of Associated Content, and it was just a matter of time before Google responded.

Why the Panda update dropped sites

A key element of the Panda update is whether Google trusts your site, and they have a variety of ways to determine this.

Most people don’t know this, but Google has been using non-employees to rate web sites for years. The program, called “Search Quality Rating Program”, has been around since at least 2003. It uses non-Google employees to rate the landing pages returned in various search queries as “vital”, “relevant”, “slightly relevant” and “off-topic” based on a specific defined set of criteria.

Among SEOs, there is speculation that, in addition to the defined criteria outlined in Google’s Search Quality Rating Program guide, Google has asked it’s raters to be more subjective in their ratings. According to Amit Singhal (one of Google’s engineers), raters have been asked to address questions like, “Would you give your credit card to this site?” or, “Would you be comfortable giving medicine prescribed by this web site to your kids?” In another interview, Matt Cutts added that other questions that might be used to establish trust are, “Do you consider this site to be authoritative?” or, “Would it be OK if this site was a magazine?” or, “Does this site have excessive ads?”

There has been further speculation on the part of SEOs that sites overloaded with Google AdSense and other ads are being targeted. (This might seem counter-productive to Google, since the bulk of its revenue comes from AdSense advertising, but Cutts has always said search quality trumps revenue. At least that is the theory.) Some SEOs are going a step further, believing that Google is looking at the physical page layout and the above-the-fold ratio of content to advertising. In fact, there may be some validity to this: many of the sites that have been reported as being penalized have more ads than content.

Singhal said the low quality content overload that had users complaining mostly came about due to their Caffeine update from June 2010. [Note: Last year’s Caffeine update rebuilt Google’s web index from the ground up. One of its main features was the ability to index the web in real time.] The thing is, the definition of "low quality" content is still a moving target for Google and Singhal says they still haven’t solved it.

Matt Cutts said that Google came up with a classifier to say, okay, the IRS or Wikipedia or The New York Times is over on the “good” side of the matrix, and the low-quality sites are over on the “bad” side. Cutts says “you can really see mathematical reasons" for why one site is good and the other is bad but it still didn’t work out exactly as planned. The new classifier does a very good job of finding low-quality sites because it’s more cautious with mixed-quality sites.

The bottom line: If you want to figure out what not to do, according to Matt Cutts: Look at Suite 101. Go there, look around, figure out what they're doing, and make sure you're doing the opposite.

One of my biggest clients is a company that publishes several popular, highly respected web sites. The sites are highly respected because the content is well written, well researched and highly authoritative. This is by design – the Editor-in-Chief has a background as a journalist and when he hires people to write for him, he hires Writers as opposed to people who [think they can] write.

Writers live and die by the written word. Every phrase, every word that is written, is carefully chosen. Headlines are designed to create interest – to pique the reader’s interest and entice them to read on. Sentences are short and succinct – there are no extraneous words. A Writer doesn’t take 1000 words to say what can be said in 500 words. Wit, humor and style are evident everywhere and strict adherence to the AP Style Guide is paramount. Writers didn’t have to worry about reaching the readers – that was the job of the publication’s circulation department. The most they had to do was write a “catchy” headline that would attract the attention of a passerby at the corner newsstand.

So what’s wrong with this picture?

The problem is that, in today’s world, where we get so much of the content we consume from online sources, that style of writing won’t work. (At least not all of it.) Good writing is still good writing, but unfortunately, Search Engines like Google and Bing don’t do “catchy”. Search Engines don’t understand, style, wit, humor or sarcasm. As a writer, getting your content read is no longer a question of catching the reader’s eye. You have to write for the reader and the search engines.

Writing for search engines isn’t rocket science and it’s not brain surgery. Sure, there are things that SEO specialists can do to improve your chances of being seen, but content is still king. Most of it is common sense. Think about it this way. If you were searching for what you just wrote, what words would you use to find it? If you do that, you’ll do just fine.

I get asked this question a lot. I think it's pretty simple, but you tell me.

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM is the business of using result Search Engine Result Pages (also called SERPS) as a vehicle for marketing your company’s product, or service. The major search engines all provide two ways for your company to appear on their SERPs:

Sponsored Listings – The 2 results at the top of the page and the six results down the right side of the page

Organic Listings – the 10 results below the 2 Sponsored Listings at the top

The SEM industry is divided into two groups or disciplines: Those companies or individuals that specialize in getting your advertising message to appear in the Sponsored Listings (SEM companies) and those companies or individuals that specialize in getting your web page to appear high up in the Organic Listings (SEO companies).

Sponsored Listings are paid listings, so getting a company’s web site or web page to appear in the Sponsored Listings section is a matter of bidding the highest price for specific keywords or keyword phrases. (Getting people to actually click on the listing is a different matter.) Since search engines only charge the advertiser if someone clicks on the link and actually goes to the web page or web site, this type of advertising is referred to as PPC (or pay-per-click) advertising.

Organic Listings – also referred to as Natural Search Listings – are not paid for. Web pages that appear high up in the Natural Search Listings do so because the search engine feels your site is highly RELEVANT to the keyword or keyword phase being searched.

Ideally, if you're trying to drive traffic to your web site, you want to do both a PPC campaign and optimize your web site for natural search. But that's something for another day.

Relevancy relies on many things including:

The TITLE of your web page and how closely it matches the keyword or phrase being searched for

The DOMAIN NAME of your web site and how closely it matches the keyword or phrase being searched for

The TYPE of domain (.edu, .com, .org, .net, .gov, etc.) your web page belongs to

The META Description of your web page how closely it matches the keyword or phrase being searched for

The QUALITY and AMOUNT of the content on your web page and how relevant it is to the keyword or phrase being searched for

The STRUCTURE of the HTML code used to create your web page

The NUMBER of links into your web page (links can come from web sites, widgets, social networks, social bookmarks, blogs, RSS feeds, discussion groups – almost anything but advertising)

The QUALITY or RELEVANCY of the other web pages (and blogs) with links to your web page