Google keyword rant

I use Google Webmaster Tools to try and figure out how my site performs in terms of keywords. It just makes sense. If Google wants to tell you what 100 keywords it thinks you have, you should probably go and take a look. Recently though, I discovered something that made me stop and think about how Google actually works.

What Google had done with the whizzydigital site was to index as keywords what was actually HTML code rather than content visible to the naked eye, and this was a little unnerving as I don’t want my keywords to be “&nbsp” or “_blank” thank you very much.

Now, I knew that Google takes into account things like domain name, HTML TITLE (no, not the meta title tag!) or ALT tags and filenames, but I didn’t know that Google thought that basic HTML formatting was also fair game. In fact, I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to include HTML code used in the design and formatting of a web site in the collection of keywords that any web site owner would want to use.

My post regarding the exaggeration of the death of search engines is still fresh in my mind, and I’m pretty glad that my online strategy is more than just hoping that Google will index my site, because clearly, Google goes gaga occasionally.

Comments are closed.

Do what you love. Love what you do.