We were recently e-mailed by one of our clients regarding an SEO company that is basically trying to sell them snake-oil and defraud them of their money. We hate companies like this because they prey on people who have good intentions but may not keep up with everything that comes from Google HQ or from SEOMoz. Yes, the title of this is in fact “Google DOES NOT CARE about META Keywords” because they don’t and haven’t for quite some time (years to be exact). What is important is your META Title and META Description. Other search engines do care about the META Keywords and it was best said to do them anyways for “META Insurance”. But, again, not an important factor at all to Google.
Below is what Matt Cutts of Google (SEO MASTER) had to say on the Google Official Webmaster Blog:
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Recently we received some questions about how Google uses (or more accurately, doesn’t use) the “keywords” meta tag in ranking web search results. Suppose you have two website owners, Alice and Bob. Alice runs a company called AliceCo and Bob runs BobCo. One day while looking at Bob’s site, Alice notices that Bob has copied some of the words that she uses in her “keywords” meta tag. Even more interesting, Bob has added the words “AliceCo” to his “keywords” meta tag. Should Alice be concerned?
At least for Google’s web search results currently (September 2009), the answer is no. Google doesn’t use the “keywords” meta tag in our web search ranking. This video explains more, or see the questions below.
Watch the Video on YouTube.
Q: Does Google ever use the “keywords” meta tag in its web search ranking?
A: In a word, no. Google does sell a Google Search Appliance, and that product has
the ability to match meta tags, which could include the keywords meta tag. But that’s an enterprise search appliance that is completely separate from our main web search. Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.
Q: Why doesn’t Google use the keywords meta tag?
A: About a decade ago, search engines judged pages only on the content of web pages, not any so-called “off-page” factors such as the links pointing to a web page. In those days, keyword meta tags quickly became an area where someone could stuff often-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords. Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.
Q: Does this mean that Google ignores all meta tags?
A: No, Google does support several other meta tags. This
meta tags page documents more info on several meta tags that we do use. For example, we do sometimes use the “description” meta tag as the text for our search results snippets.
Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don’t use the description meta tag in our ranking.
Q: Does this mean that Google will always ignore the keywords meta tag?
A: It’s possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it’s unlikely. Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently we see no need to change that policy.
Posted by Matt Cutts, Search Quality Team
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And that’s the official P’s and Q’s ladies and gentlemen. Do not let some snake-oil salesman sell you “keyword optimization” because it is FRAUDULENT! If you did, now would be a good time to go to your bank and file a fraud affidavit. But, again, this is just Google. No one, not even us, can guarantee you on the 1st page or top 10 of Google. Are they secretly hacking into the Google servers without someone noticing and changing the search algorithm themselves? HIGHLY UNLIKELY, so therefore it would be impossible for any sort of guarantee. And, Google generates results based on your IP Location, like we’re listed in Mobile, Alabama. You drive to Nashville, TN and you’re going to get different results because they’re trying to provide you relevancy based on location. Things that are generally popular, validated to W3C standards, and optimized correctly the other tags will rank higher than other sites — and that’s a fact. If doing this puts you at #1 for Google, then that’s an added bonus.
We will say that Search Engine Optimization on the META description and META title level with content analysis is a good thing, but $125 per “keyword”? Robbery and a scam. Have us take a look at your site and we’ll give you the what’s-what and who’s-who on SEO without trying to milk every dollar out of you. We’ve done this for several years now and know what techniques work and which don’t. Matt Cutts at Google saying this only helps to rectify our point.
Contact us today and get REAL SEO, not some snake-oil scheme/scam.
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The PlayStation Recap; Final Fantasy XIII Launches in the US
Gaming, Off-Topic, SEO, SMOReally, the biggest news of tonight is the launch of Final Fantasy XIII in the United States. It’s launched in the EST, but we’re still waiting on our copy in the CST. Very excited to say the least. In our own due diligence, we wanted to share with you at least an update of the PSN. The ONLY thing we’ve seen from Sony for why the systems and PlayStation Network would not work is below. We can’t but help to think it was a media stunt to gain more Twitter followers at this point:
About Google’s SEO Report Card
SEO, SEO for GoogleGoogle recently published this article on the Official Google Webmaster Blog regarding the overall SEO of Google and the products and services they offer. The PDF link within the article gives a very good overall view of how a site should be graded for SEO and what the most important things to look for include. Here’s what they had to say:
We hope this helps you on your journey through SEO and understanding what the pros look for when taking any SEO into consideration.
PlayStation Network Back Online, No Word From Sony
Gaming, Off-Topic, Repair, SEOAs of 6:20PM CST, we can confirm that our PS3’s are working as expected on the PlayStation Network. All DRM/DLC, trophies and saved data is present and accounted for. We first got word of this from Izmeiah Brown, our Lead Designer, when it broke on Gizmodo. Still no official word from Sony, but that’s typical and to be expected. This ability to login, however, does not mean that it won’t happen again. Scary how they can push an update like this and shut almost 40 million systems down without no one really noticing, isn’t it.
This is a use at your own risk deal since there has been no official word from Sony yet. We’ll let you know as soon as they start making apologies.
== UPDATE ==
Sony releases the following statement on their blog:
And that’s that. They “apologize”, but fail to state exactly what they’re going to do for breaking the trust of all of the gamers WORLDWIDE. Sure the PSN is free, but come on; The trade off is quite obvious at this point – monitoring. We should be able to play Single Player games like Heavy Rain regardless if the PSN is online or not. We should also be able to use our games that we downloaded without being told we stole it (basically what the error message implied). These are the things that they should be focusing on and making Next-Gen actually Next-Gen.
As one comment we read earlier today, you could pop in a Nintendo cartridge, and BAM you were playing the game. Why doesn’t this work the same way today for the PS3? And what about the people without access to the Internet? Are they still affected? We’ll never know because they’re completely out of touch with the rest of the living world. Trust us, if this happens again, we’re going to make sure they answer these questions that all gamers of the PS3 deserve.
How We As Gamers Feel About The PlayStation Network Crash
Gaming, Off-Topic, Rant, ReviewsWith Sony’s typical “We’ll just let them wait and find out approach” on their Blog and Twitter, not to mention the launch of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 tonight at midnight, gamers without a working PS3 are a bit upset to say the least. A global problem with the PS3 Firmware has caused an outage and system failure to systems both online and offline from the PlayStation Network. One thing we have seen this good for is Sony’s PSN Twitter Account, with records of 120-200 new followers per minute. That seems a lot like people standing around waiting for someone to say something – anything – that might help them get out of this snafu that was a major oversight by Sony’s Q/A Department. With those already doing the “corporate shuffle” and blaming MSI and Freescale as commentators on the PSN Blog should be ashamed of themselves.
At approximately 9PM CST on February 28th, 2010, users began dropping off of the PSN. They found themselves locked out of their systems, including those who had not connected and only updated via PS3 games as a mandatory firmware update, with their system clocks rolled back to December 31st, 1999. Those who had connected to the Internet and updated also found themselves in more trouble than that. Sony confirms that save data, game data and DLC and DRM Content may become corrupt if you even turn on your PS3. That’s right: Sony has advised people to not even turn on their PS3. According to CNN, Sony reported last month a total of 40 million gamers who had connected to the PSN but were not sure how many of those were plagued with this problem.
We have read around the web that players trophies have disappeared altogether – however this may not be the case. After we logged into http://us.playstation.com/, we found that only what we had done within the last two weeks, (last trophy reported was February 15th, 2010) was not present with a convenient fine print of…
That means all of our Heavy Rain and White Knight Chronicles trophies are gone…or maybe not. We don’t know yet because of their fine print. However, we can confirm that users who did hear about this problem last night and unplugged their systems from the Internet were still affected since it was the firmware that caused the problem – not the connectivity to the Internet. One user reported to us that they had never connected their PS3 to the Internet and just played Fallout 3 and their system still worked just fine.
No word from Sony yet. Some users have reported removing the system battery will correct this problem, however this will most likely void your warranty. We’ll update this post further when our staff has a chance to add few more comments.
In the mean time, tell us what you think Sony should do to fix this problem. Just push a firmware update (which we’re hearing might not even work), give us free credit to the PlayStation Store (or perhaps remove the DRM so this doesn’t happen again and we can play Single Player Games) or start shipping out PS3 Slims to everyone. We look forward to your thoughts and comments!
PlayStation Users Advised to Not Use Their PS3
Gaming, Off-Topic, Repair, SEO for GoogleA recent update from Sony PlayStation Blog stated that PlayStation users are advised to NOT use their PS3’s due to the wide-spread issue with the PlayStation Network. Here’s the direct post that they made:
As we thought, this is the PS3 Y2K bug indeed. Let’s hope this is resolved before FFXIII comes out.
PlayStation Network Down from 8001050F Error Code Recap
Gaming, Off-Topic, Repair, SEO for GoogleAs we had reported last night, the Sony PlayStation Network was (and still is) down because of an unexplained technical issue. The issue causes an error code of 8001050F to appear upon launching any PS3 Blu-Ray Game, setting the clock back to 12/31/1999 (sounds a lot like a Y2K bug), trophy sync problems and downloaded content (DLC) to show that there are invalid copyright permissions. This has caused a lot of headache among hundreds of thousands of gamers globally and still no update from Sony on their blog or their Twitter feed.
So, what is this? A PS3 Y2K bug? Possibly. The error code “8001050F” is referenced to mean “Hardware failure. Cannot update firmware or connect to internet.” However, upon launching most games, players are getting a message stating “Registration of the trophy information could not be completed. The game will quit. (8001050F)”. Why would this be? Shouldn’t the PS3 work offline too? That’s what we thought. All of our offline DLC, such as Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII (PS1/PSP Playable) does not work at all. We can’t play single player games that shouldn’t rely on the Internet or not such as Heavy Rain. All we have to say is we hope that this is fixed today, and for sure before the 9th of this month, when Final Fantasy XIII releases.
Usually by this point, Sony would/should have replied…but what’s to be expected from a free network? Our advice: If you haven’t turned on your PS3 yet, don’t. It’s tragic enough to read about and even worse to see for yourself. Last night, the topic of “playstation network crash” hit the #5 hottest trend on Google and now currently sits at #40. Wait until Sony updates their Blog or Twitter with “we’ve fixed the error”. We will keep you posted as well, so stay tuned.
PlayStation Network Crash Confirmed
SEOWe’ve seen our own confirmation of the PlayStation Network crash this evening. From reports from Mashable, Kotaku and Engadget, it would seem that this is affecting all types of PS3 systems. A later tweet from the SonyPlayStation stated the following:
After reading the web, we’ve seen that the problem can accompany the 8001050F error code – turning your PS3 into a brick. Even the newest games such as Darksiders, Heavy Rain and Bioshock 2 can trigger this problem corrupting saved data, trophies and more.
We’ve also seen that attempting to play DLC games like Final Fantasy VII or VIII that a Copyright/licensing error occurs. WTF. We bought this, it should work!
We hope Sony the best and hope things return to normal soon!
The Inconvenient Truth About HubSpot’s Website Grader
Rant, SEOI’ve come across a few blogs reviewing the use of Website Grader from Hubspot and they all have mixed reviews. Over the course of 2009 until now, I have to say that we have found the results to be inconsistent at best. We’ve ensured that our site is not only W3C Valid, but also have passed the initial 508 Compliance tests from Cynthia Says for our home page, Checked with DomainTools on our SEO score (We score 100% on all metrics there), have listed ourselves in the paid Yahoo! Directory and are listed in the DMOZ.
Not only that, we’ve turned on GZIP Compression in Apache using mod_gzip and mod_deflate, tuned Apache, PHP and MySQL, enabled all other sorts of goodies for security and speed, turned on all types of Caching, checked our headers and then did the entire process all over again when we migrated servers. We just can’t seem to get past the 95-98.6% range on Website Grader. The one good thing of all of this is that our Alexa ranking is improving dramatically and we’re still #1 in our area for what we do.
HubSpot has said many times over that they are not selling SEO “snake oil”…but if you sign up for their 7 day free trial, you’ll find a hefty $9000.00 price-point PER YEAR with a $500.00 setup fee if you want to continue. Surely they know who they want to market to with that kind of investment for one company. With a “free SEO tool”, pushing someone to eventually spend this much money is a bit absurd to find out information that you could have Googled or found with another “free SEO tool”.
Hubspot says this about their product:
While this may be true, it only gives a very topographical look – more correctly as one blog put it as a “website check engine light”. Now, what really, honestly, confuses me is when searching Google for Website Grader, I managed to pull up a site that not only has a poor design, but it scores higher than we do on Website Grader. Check this out. How does a site with that many errors get listed as 99.3? CertGuard.com has a 99.5 and about the same number of errors. So, why is it when we take all of these measures to CORRECT the things that HubSpot are listed as wrong that we are scored lower in light of the two sites that have multiple Website Grader errors and score higher? This seems backwards. Why put your trust in a company that asks for this much money and does not accurately depict a website?
On another note, you can order effective and worthy SEO services from TurkReno Incorporated at our online store for much less than HubSpot is asking for.
Comments are welcome.
Motorola MOTOROKR S9-HD Review With iPhone 3G S 3.0.1 OS – Newly Updated!!
Marketing, ReviewsMotorola MOTOROKR S9-HD
I have been really wanting something that works well as a Bluetooth headset, as a real headset, to do A2DP on the iPhone 3G S. I decided to try the Motorola MOTOROKO S9-HD over trying the JayBird JB-200 Headset again. Overall, it works just as bad as the ones with the adapters when playing music (very choppy, very random pauses). However, you don’t need an adapter to get this pair to do Bluetooth iPhone calls or iPod.
I have been surprised with this new acronym that my iPhone doesn’t seem to be able to do (AVRCP), at least not yet. It seems to also do the pairing automatically without asking for a code. The instruction booklet says that the code is 0000, but I didn’t ever need to put that in. I’ll keep it simply for the fact that it does pair with our Broadcom Bluetooth receiver which is actually a Rocketfish Bluetooth Transmitter. It will work well as a diagnostic and day to day tool, and will be great for driving and hands-free.
=== UPDATE: 11/12/2009 ===
We wanted to write an update that these work PERFECTLY with the iPhone 3GS 3.1.2 OS. No skipping, techno sounds great, 100% all the way Motorola S9-HD! Worth the buy!
Google DOES NOT CARE about META Keywords
Google, SEO, SEO Methods, TechnologyWe were recently e-mailed by one of our clients regarding an SEO company that is basically trying to sell them snake-oil and defraud them of their money. We hate companies like this because they prey on people who have good intentions but may not keep up with everything that comes from Google HQ or from SEOMoz. Yes, the title of this is in fact “Google DOES NOT CARE about META Keywords” because they don’t and haven’t for quite some time (years to be exact). What is important is your META Title and META Description. Other search engines do care about the META Keywords and it was best said to do them anyways for “META Insurance”. But, again, not an important factor at all to Google.
Below is what Matt Cutts of Google (SEO MASTER) had to say on the Google Official Webmaster Blog:
—
Watch the Video on YouTube.
Posted by Matt Cutts, Search Quality Team
—
And that’s the official P’s and Q’s ladies and gentlemen. Do not let some snake-oil salesman sell you “keyword optimization” because it is FRAUDULENT! If you did, now would be a good time to go to your bank and file a fraud affidavit. But, again, this is just Google. No one, not even us, can guarantee you on the 1st page or top 10 of Google. Are they secretly hacking into the Google servers without someone noticing and changing the search algorithm themselves? HIGHLY UNLIKELY, so therefore it would be impossible for any sort of guarantee. And, Google generates results based on your IP Location, like we’re listed in Mobile, Alabama. You drive to Nashville, TN and you’re going to get different results because they’re trying to provide you relevancy based on location. Things that are generally popular, validated to W3C standards, and optimized correctly the other tags will rank higher than other sites — and that’s a fact. If doing this puts you at #1 for Google, then that’s an added bonus.
We will say that Search Engine Optimization on the META description and META title level with content analysis is a good thing, but $125 per “keyword”? Robbery and a scam. Have us take a look at your site and we’ll give you the what’s-what and who’s-who on SEO without trying to milk every dollar out of you. We’ve done this for several years now and know what techniques work and which don’t. Matt Cutts at Google saying this only helps to rectify our point.
Contact us today and get REAL SEO, not some snake-oil scheme/scam.