Web Design and SEO Blog - from tillwilly

I’ve read lots of peoples opinions over the last few months on various forums / blogs etc. that the meta keyword tag is no longer important. To be honest, I would of agreed with them, until I accidentally find out that yahoo still values it.

Even though I previously thought meta keywords were insignificant, when optimising a site, I still included them as I’ve always thought it is good practice. Last month, when doing some ranking checks for one of our clients - Danne Montague King - I noticed that in Yahoo, the site was ranking first for acne specialists, but no where at all for acne specialist!

It was one of those situations where you just think, eh?

The page was more optimised for acne specialists, than acne specialist but one would assume that one letter would not make much difference, after all it didn’t in the google rankings.

When checking through the code on the page I noticed straight away that I had not included acne specialist as a phrase in the meta keywords section. So I added it to the keywords, uploaded the page then what do you know, less than a week later the page had been re-cached and the site was second in Yahoo for acne specialist.

I was quite surprised that Yahoo relied on meta keywords so much. Perhaps I’m looking too much into it, maybe it was just a coincidence, but I personally feel there is some yardage in still using meta keywords, so I would advise all my fellow search engine optimisationers to do the same.

When I get chance, I’ll do some more testing on my theory, then update with the results!

Andrew
Search Engine Marketer

I’ve come across a lot of web designers in my time, who know nothing about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). By nothing I mean nada, zilch! This is a problem I see more and more, where people learn to how to design websites and that’s all they think they need to do, and the people having the site built believe this too.

For a small /medium business looking to drive business through their website, having a website that doesn’t search for your main keywords is like having a car with no petrol in, it’s pointless.

Now google is throwing a bone to SEO beginners by releasing a starter guide. It covers all the basics you should take into account when building your site to be search engine friendly.

You can view it / download it here.

Andrew
Search Engine Marketer

Here at tillwilly, we have just completed the new website for one of our clients, Sasi Designer Kitchens.

Sasi Designer Kitchens & Designer Bathrooms are a West Yorkshire based company specialising in Kitchens & Bathrooms with the ‘WOW’ factor, at the very best prices. Sasi are available to fit kitchens & bathrooms throughout West Yorkshire. Sasi have kitchen fitters with over 25 years experience, and are the perfect choice for your dream kitchen or bathroom!

Sasi had a previous design done by tillwilly, which they were pleased with, but the company has big plans for 2009 and wanted a new, slick design to go with that plan. The site also has a custom built Content Management System (CMS) to allow Sasi to edit the site when they need to.

The site is valid to all the W3 Standards and has been featured on a number of css galleries.

Along with the new design, after conquering the more local search terms, tillwilly are working on getting Sasi ranked for more general kitchen search terms, such as ‘Designer Kitchens‘ to give them even more web presence.

Please visit SasiKitchens.co.uk to take a look.

Mark
Web Designer