As I’ve shared with you in a previous post, getting your keywords targeted on your website is important, period. There are several top-level steps that are really considered basics to SEO practice. One of these steps is entering your keywords into the meta keyword tags within your website code. Back in October I shared some insight about Google meta keywords tag and the fact that it is NOT considered important in the Google algorithm. Well, some people have said the same goes for Yahoo, but that’s not necessarily accurate.

In case you are tilting your head in confusion, let me go over why some search engines don’t value the meta keyword tag. Years ago, more like a decade, webmasters did everything they knew about to get their websites found. Search engines were no where near the quality they are now. If you searched for something there was a good probability that the results would have a mix of content – some what you wanted, some completely unrelated. A reason these results were less than accurate was because of the meta keyword tag. Webmasters would enter a slew of keywords in the code hoping that popular searched keywords would get their sites seen…even though the content had NOTHING to do with the keyword.

For instance, if the website was all about customizing computers, the keyword meta tag may/would include ‘cars’, ‘bmw’, and ‘money’ for the sole purpose in simply getting visitors. As the person doing the search, it made finding what you wanted far more painful than it should have been.

So…that’s when Google started developing more sophisticated search algorithyms to provide relevant, quality results. At some point (I doubt it was right away) Google stopped including the keywords meta tag in the search algorithm but not all search engines have followed suit. You can’t assume Yahoo or any other search engine plays by the same rules as Google – they don’t know all the rules Google uses, nor do I unfortunately.

Simple tests have been performed to debunk whether or not Yahoo really looks at the keyword meta tag. Despite what Yahoo announced it seems they DO still look for the keyword tag. To learn how this was determined, read the post at Search Engine Land on why they claim Yahoo still uses the meta keyword tag.

So don’t neglect to include your keywords tag within your website. Just because Google doesn’t look at it isn’t a good enough reason not to include it.

Soon I’ll be reporting on the results of Bing/Live since that’s the other big search engine in the group. Since “Bing” is so new, it might be harder to find similar answers. And, who knows, maybe they too will announce less-than-accurate data.

Stay tuned!

In December of 2009 AOL will be breaking away from Time Warner and thus be adopting a new branding concept which seems a bit “out there”. It’s probably safe to say that the majority of adults have heard of “America Online” (AOL) at some point, especially during the first decade of the internet. For a long time AOL has branded themselves with a triangle-shaped icon/logo which we’ve seen morph a few times over the years of their existence. But that is all about to change, entirely.

It’s time to say good-bye to that oh-so-famous recognizable brand and hello to a branding change that has me slightly surprised. We recognize the normal “AOL” as part of their logo but the new change will be branding “Aol.”…exactly like that, with the important period…and that “Aol.” will sit on top of a graphic that changes from time to time. Yes, that sounds a little strange. You’ve seen the google home page when the logo represents some event in history that happened during the current time, such as the anniversary of Sesame Street. AOL is doing something similar except it will BE part of their new brand.

Thinking this is only a handful of changing logos would be typical, but think again. There are hundreds of these backgrounds ready for this branding idea. Imagine seeing “Aol.” on top of a leaf, friendly monster, camera, etc.. The idea is to open the minds of people to understanding the broad stroke that AOL plays in terms of their content.

The next time you see the AOL brand you may not recognize it, but will this pivotal change really make you aware? The research says this will be a success – time will tell. From a design perspective it’s tough to dramatically change a brand and have people recognize it in a short amount of time. AOL has been falling and they need to make some big changes; this may be what they need.