When someone uses a search engine, they type in one or more words describing what they are looking for: 'German Christmas market' or 'best online clothing store', for example. These words or phrases are known as keywords. Whatever search engine they are using then comes back with a list of web pages, with content that relates to the keyword used. So, if you are building a business website, you want your website to appear as early as possible in the list of results. That is what search engine optimization with keywords is all about.
Let's compare how two popular merchandizers use keywords.
This is an excerpt of code from Jeep's website:<meta content="jeep, jeep vehicles, 4wd, 4x4, jeeps, off road, suvs, crossover suv, jeep.com, jeep models" name="keywords">
And here is the same piece of code from the Spam website:
<meta name="keywords" content="">
The big difference? Jeep uses keywords in their source code and Spam does not. Why could this be?
People have abused the system by putting dozens of irrelevant keywords in there which made it useless for the search engines. For example, if a watch company wants to get more page views, they could put "Barack Obama" into the keywords, to direct more traffic to their site. So, if as a business you do decide to use the keyword meta tag, make sure you do it right - be sure that they are absolutely relevant to the post.
What do you think? Is it better to use keywords or not, considering you're a huge brand like Jeep or Spam?
Hi Emily,
ReplyDeleteI would have to say if a website is using keywords they are looking for people who are really looking for that item. For instance with Jeep, if they didn't use keywords they could receive a lot more traffic to their site but is it worth it? If someone is serious about looking for a vehicle and uses one of the keywords when searching, they will come to the Jeep website. I think Jeep does a really good job with their website. Great information.
Val
Emily,
ReplyDeleteYou made a very interesting observation that, when comparing Jeep's website and it's keywords to Spam.com, there was a big difference. I wonder why this is too! I found the same thing in my assignment for this week when I evaluated Sears.com. The only thing I could come up with is that the developers of the website are leaving the search engines to rank their website by grabbing words from the title tag and the description part of the header in order to decide on the website's rank on the search results page. Great finding and post!
Rachel