Some topics are so shrouded in mystery, they can divide the very SEO experts themselves. Nowhere is this more true than the ubiquitous meta tag. Sure, you’ve written a fantastic meta description, volunteered some of your more important meta keywords (even if you are unsure how much impact the latter will have).

But what next? What other meta tags should you include? Here are just some of the meta tags I see in wide use on the web:

<meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1“>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”meta tags, rogue meta tags, useless meta tags, dangerous meta tags” />
<meta name=”description” content=”The Manchester SEO Blog guide to meta tags, rogue meta tags and downright dangerous ones.” />
<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”3;URL=http://manchester-seo-blog.co.uk/”>
<meta name=”robots” content=”would you pass the Turing test?” />
<meta name=”title” content=”Redundant Meta Title” />
<meta name=”rating” content=”unsuitable for homosapiens” />
<meta name=”distribution” content=”global” />
<meta name=”publisher” content=”Rogue Meta Tag Technology Ltd.” />
<meta name=”author” content=”John Doe“>
<meta name=”designer” content=”Jane Doe“>
<meta name=”copyright” content=”Rogue Meta Tag Technology Ltd. All Rights Reserved“>
<meta name=”abstract” content=”A brief overview of some of the more useful, the useless and the downright dangerous meta tags people use on their web pages.“>

In this post, I hope to provide you with a brief overview to the jungle of meta tags.

Useful Meta Tags and Robots

<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow” />
<meta name=”googlebot” content=”noimageindex” />

Some meta tags can be used to give the robots supplemental information about your page and modify their default behaviour. Meta keywords and description have already been discussed. Robots, is highly useful one which you can direct at all crawlers by specifying “robots” or to a specific crawler such as “googlebot”. You can use directives such as: noindex (do not index), nofollow (do not follow links on this page), noarchive (do not store cached copy of page), noodp (do not use DMOZ description), noydir (do not use the description from Yahoo directory). Not all robots are polite, and at the time of writing, only Googlebot, Yahoo and Bing/MSN/Live crawlers respect these directives. Googlebot also supports: noimageindex (do not index images on page), notranslate (do not offer to translate the page) and unavailable_after (will not recommend for search after a particular date)

Other Useful Meta Tags

There are a small number of other useful meta tags, such as:

<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”3;URL=http://manchester-seo-blog.co.uk/”>
<meta http-equiv=”content-language” content=”en-US,fr”>

The first will cause your brower to refresh the page after X seconds (where X is the first number in the content section). You can also specify a URL and use this to redirect your page. But this is the worst kind of redirect, as any SEO expert will say, you are better using a 301 redirect. The second meta tag allows you to specify the language content of the page itself. (see later for multiple language meta tags)

The Redundant Meta Tags

All major Search Engines will ignore meta tags such as: rating, distribution, rating,  author, designer and publisher. You may have your own reasons for including these, but do not expect them to make a difference in your websites rank! Some (such as the ‘rating’ meta tag) were genuinely proposed as a method for allowing webmasters to set the ‘age appropriateness’ of web pages. The difficulty is that without the backing of W3C, it is not standard. Without a set standard, we cannot expect search engines to habitually use meta tags like these. There is also an issue of honesty when reporting on the self :- if you are a webmaster who runs a site, would you wilfully restrict access to your website?

Meta Tags in Multiple Languages

The W3C consortium have proposed a method in which you may specify several different sets of meta tags in different languages within the same page, by using the lang=”" form. For example:

<meta name=”keywords” lang=”en-us” content=”vacation, Greece, sunshine”>
<meta name=”keywords” lang=”en” content=”holiday, Greece, sunshine”>
<meta name=”keywords” lang=”fr” content=”vacances, Gr&egrave;ce, soleil”>
<meta name=”keywords” lang=”ja” content=”空室, ギリシャ, 日照”>

Summary

If in doubt – leave it out! Google and most other search engines will make very good guesses about your page based on the content itself. If you are not sure how to use the meta tag, it is best not to! You may find interesting ways of shooting yourself in the foot by asking search engines to not index or cache your page. It is always better to err on the side of caution, and (as ever) look to W3C as a guide.

In this second exciting instalment in the Digital Economy Bill series, The Manchester SEO Blog Just Roger IT! will demonstrate how you can reconfigure your computer to make use of Google’s own DNS system. I will also explain why this might provide another valuable tool to add to your Swiss Army Knife of tactics that will subvert any level of control the UK government might attempt to impose upon the Internet itself.

What is DNS (Domain Name System)?

Basically, DNS is a giant Internet phonebook – every time you access a website using a domain name, your computer resolves that name into the IP address of the machine that will serve out your desired website. For example, this website www.manchester-seo-blog.co.uk is hosted on the machine with the IP address 82.165.217.36. Although the reality is more complex, this is essentially why DNS is an important part of being able to access a website.

Google’s DNS and Blockages

DNS may become important if our government tries to block ‘undersirable’ websites that may have found their way on to Santa’s naughty list. One possible block the government may attempt to use, would be to do something to the DNS itself. While the machine itself may be reachable from yours, the website will become – in effect – ex-directory and you will therefore not be able to connect to the website through the domain.

A few months ago, Google began offering a free and fast DNS service, and with some minor reconfiguration of your computer, you can use Google’s DNS instead of your ISP’s own. Because Google operate this service from the United States, the UK government will be unable to stop your machine using this service.

How To Configure Your System

Configuring Google’s DNS for Windows XP

To add Google’s DNS servers to your Internet configuration, simply follow these steps:

• Click Start, then Control Panel and from here double click Network Connections
• Right click on the network connection you use and click Properties.
• From this dialog box, highlight the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) option and cilck Properties

Right click on the network connection you use and click Properties.

• Next, simply click the radio button: ‘Use the following DNS server addresses:‘ and enter Google’s DNS servers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

Configuring Google’s DNS for Windows 7

• Click Start, then Control Panel and from here click Network and Internet
• From this control panel, click Network Center and then click the Personalize link.
• From this dialog box, highlight the Internet connection your computer uses, then cilck the Properties button.

Right click on the network connection you use and click Properties.

• Click the Properties button in this next dialog box (you may need to provide admin password at this point)
• Highlight the TCP/IP Version 4 option and click ‘Properties‘ and in the next dialog box, click: ‘Use the following DNS addresses‘ and enter 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4..

Okay, by now you should be all done! Click OK and apply all of those settings. Google’s DNS System is so awesome that you may well improve the speed and responsiveness of your Internet as a by-product. The important thing is that nobody within the UK would be able to stop you, and should the government attempt to block domains using some DNS tricks, this would provide a neat way around it!

This morning, the Manchester SEO Blog was moved to it’s new home at manchester-seo-blog.co.uk, but please remain calm, any links or bookmarks you had will continue to work (if you want to know how to do this click here!).  I really enjoyed the domain branding I had with just.roger-it.co.uk, but recent events and changes to Google have forced me to move this to an ‘official’ top-level domain.

Why Move Now?

Well, actually there are several reasons. One is that Google recently made some drastic alterations to their search function, which has caused quite a shift in the labyrinth of SEO game-play rules, and this move is largely to guard myself against this.

There have also been some significant changes some of the Google’s services. Google Labs provide some tools in the Webmaster Control panel which are now only available to top level domains, not sub domains. This week, Google also altered the way Google Analytics tracking handles sub domains and their relation to top level domains.  It is not clear why all these changes were made, but each one hints that sites on sub domains will be taken less seriously, than the top level domains they will come to depend on a little more heavily.  The need for raw SEO power outweighs the delightful URL sculpting I felt I had going on.

No Need To Adjust Your TV Sets

But such is life, and like a tree in the wind we must be shaped by these changes or else face being broken by the force!  The Manchester SEO Blog is still the same great site it has been, and still endeavours to deliver useful SEO tips and online marketing advice it always has. Please do not adjust your TV sets!

One of the more irritating downsides of maintaining a popular website, is having to wade through twenty spam emails to get to a single genuine one! Somehow it makes common sense to place as few barriers between yourself and potential customers as possible – the more complex you make a contact form, the less likely people will actually be to complete it correctly.  As an experienced writer of web crawlers and various digital critters, The Manchester SEO Blog author will tonight be dishing out some neat little Javascript tricks that will outfox nine out of ten spambots.

Thinking Like One of Them

First off, you have to think like a machine! Picture this: a bot has just fetched your web page, and is now carefully carving the <HTML> tags away from your juicey plain text content. Within this text it will search for some indication of an email address.

Using Javascript To Protect Your Email

Because Javascript is a client-side application, most crawlers will completely ignore it.  It is computationally costly, and aside from Google’s neat indexing of ticker tape text, we cannot expect a great deal of text content to come from Javascript.  This enables you to ‘hide’ your email in a document.write statement, using the character code for @ to avoid it even looking like an email to those that do process Javascript!
<script type="text/javascript">
hideme=('roger' + String.fromCharCode(64) + 'just.roger-it.co.uk')
document.write(
'<A href="mailto:' + hideme + '">'
+ hideme + '</a>'
)
</script>
If you wish, you could take this one step further and replace the mailto: part of the link with the ASCII character codes which will make it even harder to detect.
<script type="text/javascript">
hideme=('roger' + String.fromCharCode(64) + 'just.roger-it.co.uk')
document.write(
'<A href="&#109;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#116;&#111;&#58;' + hideme + '">'
+ hideme + '</a>'
)
</script>

Here is the code running from this page:

How To Cope When Human Visitor Does Not Have Javascript Enabled

The one obvious weakness in this tactic is the dependence upon your visitors having Javascript enabled. While in practice this will mean the code works for the vast majority, it always helps to be prepared for those which might not be so lucky.  What I find most helpful without compremising all this trickery is to simply use the <noscript> tag below the Javascript:
<noscript>
<form method="post" action="contact.php">
<input type="text" name="username" >
<input type="text" name="email" >
<textarea name="comment" cols=40 rows=6 ></textarea >
<img src="captcha.php" alt="Please Enter Captcha Text" >
<input type="text" name="captcha" >
</form>
</noscript>

So there you have it. The ayes have it … the spambots (hopefully!) don’t. Using this method you should be able to minimize the number of mailing lists your email is added to, and not risk any of your points of contact with potential customers!

The Manchester SEO Blog recently revealed that .gb.com domains face extreme penalties in Google, with revelations that sparked a storm of controversy in Google Webmasters forum. I am very pleased to present to everyone today evidence that confirms gb.com domains are penalised in Google.

I didn’t intend to take things quite this far, but my hand was forced by gaggle of nay-sayers who didn’t accept there was problem. My friend and I realised that overwhelming empirical evidence was the only route to go.

Proving gb.com Domains are Penalized in Google

We began by compiling a list of 35 .gb.com, .uk.com and .co.uk domains, which were chosen by Google. In each case we did: site:*.gb.com, site:*.uk.com and site:*.co.uk into the Google Search bar to populate our list of URLs. It is our hope that any bias Google has for the order in which domains are returned using this command, will be applied to all tests and can therefore be eliminated as a variable. We also used a random selection of 16 additional hand picked domains for each type of domain from DMOZ.

We chose uk.com domains as these closely resemble gb.com domains in structure and would act as the control, as we suspected uk.com domains were not penalized in Google. We also included .co.uk domains as a comparison that would highlight any other issues of the apparent sub-domain structure of the former two types of domains.

For each domain in turn we did a Google search for:

• The Domain Name
• The Entire <title> Element
• The Company Name
• The Entire META Description

gb.com Domain Penalization Results

The results were astounding – it rapidly became apparent that .uk.com domains had a similar ranking behaviour to .co.uk domains. .gb.com domains on the other hand were usually several pages behind – often ranking on page three, four or five for their own company name or entire title tag. The .co.uk and .uk.com domains however, were usually found on page 1 in most cases.

The entire gb.com domain penalization test Excel Spreadsheet here.

co.uk Domain Ranking Results

uk.com Domain Ranking Results

gb.com Domain Ranking Results

What do these results mean? Well, despite all the opposition who were reluctant to accept there was a problem, clearly gb.com domains do face a penalty in Google. Does this stop you from ranking? No, but there are very few that appear to have high ranking gb.com domains, and the sensible SEO advice would be to avoid these where possible and view this blog entry to find out how to fix it!

This week, the diarrhetic discourse of Derek Powazek unleashed an unfortunate cacophony of criticisms into the world of SEO that left a rather bitter aftertaste. I for one shall certainly not be defending Search Engine Optimisation. Why? SEO no more needs my defence, than one plus one needs me to convince people it is – in fact – two!

It was doubly distasteful therefore, that he chose to use personal attacks upon the character of the people involved in SEO, instead of focusing his hatred on the industry where his grudge and (more accurately) his lack of understanding originated.

Rather than stoop to his level and render my personal criticisms of his character, I would rather play his words as knives upon which he will fall, allowing the reader to carefully dissect his arguments and arrive at an informed decision. Lets start with the obvious:

SEO is Not a Legitimate Form of Marketing

This is a very arbitrary statement. Surely if I were to walk down my street, talking loudly on my mobile about McDonalds for everyone to hear, this might be considered a form of advertising, even if I didn’t necessarily intend it to be so. If I spray painted the Nike logo on my neighbours house, Nike would certainly consider this publicity, even if my neighbour didn’t like it. Heck, the Britons are so frightened of accidental marketing they will even blur brand names in movies and documentaries! If any of the above tactics are done with a definite goal and plan, we have met the definition of marketing! Anyway, who put Derek in charge of deciding what marketing is? I could say the sky was green, but that wouldn’t make it so either. He offers no justification upon which this statement is based, other than his own say-so.

These scammers claim that they can dance the magic dance that will please the Google Gods and make eyeballs rain down upon you.

I think Derek may need to lay of the drugs a little, what we actually claim runs a bit more like : “if you write a document entitled : ‘SEO is a scam’, where you make wild and unfounded accusations about SEO being a scam, then you are more likely to start getting found for phrases around ‘SEO’ being a ‘scam’ in Google”. I’m having trouble putting it any more simply than this. Part of SEO is about writing content people wish to read that is relevant to the search terms and giving the search engines a damn good reason to deliver fresh readers to your website!

It’s So Obvious …Anyone Who Pays For SEO Is a Fool

Very true Sir Derek, and I can wash my own dirty dishes in the kitchen sink fairly easily too. Does this mean anyone paying for a dishwasher is a sucker? What about financial outsourcing services? Many small to medium sized businesses find that a outsourcing to a professional accountant gets the job done quickly, and therefore costs less in the long run.  SEO is certainly not simple, otherwise why would so many resources, blogs and self-help websites exist?  There are some great links in this blog I openly encourage people to visit.  SEO is by no means simple, and anyone who believes it is, probably isn’t doing it right!

SEO is Poisoning the Web

This is my favourite of all! Six months ago I began writing my own simple search engine using PHP 4 and MySQL 4, and actually found it helpful to rely a on META Keywords, META Descriptions and Titles of documents a little, as they often gave clues as to the documents content. The honesty of the user can be easily verified by simply checking to see if this word occurs within the page itself. Aside from the obvious overspaming of these elements, I actually found this gave me more information on which to base my search queries. Without them, I would have less information on which to base my SQL query, making the job harder, and forcing me to do more complex analysis of the text content itself.

Equally, encouraging users to include relevant links between documents actually help make the web easier to navigate, giving your visitor the choice of learning more about any particular topic under discussion. When I began building my own search engine I found this document very helpful, and would thoroughly recommend the O’Reilly book on  High Performance MySQL.

Google Believe in SEO

If SEO is a scam, why would Google post their own official web master guidelines? You calling them a liar?

Finally, My Own Testimony

As a graduate of Computer Science who left the University of Liverpool with a 2:1, writing his dissertation on Genetic Programming – a cutting edge form of artificial intelligence at the time – I have used a range of languages to develop everything from Windows to Linux platforms.  I maintain a web server on my home network of six computers, yet I can quite honestly say that SEO is a labour that demands all the skills I have, and plenty I’m still working on!

No ladies and gentlemen, Derek is the child who cannot stand being beaten at a game, so he throws his toys out of the pram and tells us that the game was stupid anyway.

When the history books are written, we shall not be painted in as con artists and SEO scam merchants, but pioneers of a cutting edge (and often misunderstood!) form of marketing, still in it’s relative infancy. A form of marketing which didn’t exist before we started typing.

Something which has come to my attention recently (and it’s rare that anything does!) is that Google is penalising  .gb.com domains quite severly within it’s search results. After a bout of rigorous testing, the Manchester SEO Blog can confirm that .gb.com domains may hamper your SEO, to such an extent it because very difficult to get these domains to rank well.  This is a warning to anyone who has (or knows someone with!) a .uk.com, .us.com or anything similar. But there is hope!

What Is The Problem with .gb.com Domains in Google?

Like .uk.com and .us.com domains, these domains look like sub domains. Google knows that sub domains have a fair amount of independence from the main site and domain, but will hold all parts equally responsible for the whole. Let’s suppose Sue has sue.gb.com and Fred has fred.gb.com. If Fred were to use black hat SEO techniques and get himself punished, Sue will also suffer because Google will hold her site partly responsible.

As recently as last year it was possible get first page Google listings with .gb.com domains, but alas what appears to have happened is that the www.gb.com homepage is deemed too much like spam for Google to trust any other domains off .gb.com.

I realised the sheer scale of this problem by searching out a hundred .gb.com domains in DMOZ, then copying and pasting their <title> tags into the Google search bar. The highest I saw any domain listed was about page 3, but most were page 5, outranked by their domain WHOIS entry and Alexa Traffic Rank. This is the first sign that something was very wrong beyond simple poor listings!

After some further testing, I can confirm it is not possible to get good rankings with any of these domains in Google, and – for SEO purposes – they should be avoided at all costs!

How Do I Get My .gb.com Domain Listed in Google?

I was able to resolve this problem by simply using a new domain, and setting up a 301 redirect. Believe it or not, Google recognises all the good PR and popularity the .gb.com domain had, but leaves behind the penalty points of being part of that domain. The person I solved this for suddenly shot onto the first page of Google the moment they were indexed around six days later.

How Do I Know If My Domain Is Penalised By Google?

There are several points to check:

• Try to find a page with at least 60 characters in the title tag, then simply copy and paste this into the Google search bar. Nine times in Ten if everything works as it should, you should be on that first page.
• If not, try surrounding this with quotes for an exact match and see if this makes a difference
• Try searching for your website or company name along with your address (if this features on the site). If again you don’t see yourself, this is another possible diagnosis.
• Try searching for your domain name itself. If you find the WHOIS information and Alexa website above yours, we know something is not right

What Does This Mean For .uk.com,  .us.com and Similar Domains?

Firstly, don’t panic! I believe it is unlikely we will see anything similar with the .uk.com .us.com and similar domains, unless the homepages of these sites turn into spam of the same calibre as www.gb.com which I think is unlikely. But nothing stops you being prepared – be sure to have an alternate domain handy. Hopefully you have done the sensible thing already and bought up all domains around your brand names and company name (it makes good sense to do anyway!).

If you suddenly find your site disappears, follow the tests outlined above. If at least two of them fail, then it is probably time to set up a 301 redirect to your other domain. Only do this as a very last resort once you have confirmed this is the root of the problem!

…Why Google Announced They Don’t?

One of my favourite passages from Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ runs something like:

故曰：知彼知己，百戰不殆；不知彼而知己，一勝一負；不知彼，不知己，每戰必殆。(故曰：知彼知己，百战不殆；不知彼而知己，一胜一负；不知彼，不知己，每战必殆。

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.

This week Google announced that it did not use the META keywords tag in web ranking, The Manchester SEO Blog investigates the reasons for the timing of this announcement.

Google recently announced that META Keywords do not affect Google’s Web Ranking, and since then the mainstream media has wrongly concluded that META keywords are therefore no longer a part of SEO. If you read (or watch!) Googles blog and video carefully, they never once said that META keywords do not have a role in SEO.

Why Did Google Choose To Announce This Now?

The truly epic scale of these legal law suits became apparent last month with the European Court of Justice stepping in to intervene and back Google up.

What Links These Law Suits to the META Keyword Tag?

So what links all of these law suits to this legendary META keyword tag? Why does Google hope this announcement about META Keywords will somehow alleviate the situation? Well, the amount you end up paying per click with Google AdWords will vary depending on several factors, one of these is the quality score. And (of course!) part of ensuring a high quality score is making sure your website is optimised for the keywords you are campaigning on. While Google may be correct that the META keywords tag does not affect your “web ranking in search results” (Google’s own ambiguous words), there is clearly more to this story than that.

Why Keyword Context is Key to Search Advertising

What the marketing experts of these big companies probably don’t realise, is the importance of context within search advertising. When I’m sat watching TV, the advertiser doesn’t know my favourite areas of interest, I have no choice about the adverts that I watch and the advertiser knows little about their target audience. With a Google search, the keywords I enter indicate my specific area of interest, making it important to match my search with a product that lies within this area.

Lets suppose I searched for ‘cola’, I might be persuaded to buy Pepsi because my search was a little vague. However, if I’ve entered ‘Coca Cola’ (the registered trademark name), this is most likely because I have a preference already and while advertising on competitor trademarks like this might bring a few clicks, they would by unlikely to convert into any healthy level of sales to match the cost of advertising. The added bonus, is the company will have succeeded in compromising the quality of search during this process, which is why many would consider this a black hat SEO technique.

This example may be a little oversimplified, (maybe over used) but the same would be true if I were searching for ‘hotel manchester’ vs. ‘premier inn manchester’. Context is the key!