Don’t Forget about Site Search Optimization

Although the unethical SEO practice of “keyword stuffing” in one’s metacontent (source code behind each web page) has thankfully expired, old remnants are still out there.

I’ve seen many older sites with horrific meta-keyword lists in their source code. I audited one recently that had 950 keywords stringed along in the metacontent - and the same ones for every page!

Another client had her company name, not SEO-friendly to begin with, repeated over and over ad-naseum in her meta-keywords.

(Like many business owners, they had no clue this was hurting their site’s chance of ranking better in search engines. How would they?)

No keyword stuffing; keep the list small and targeted

So, strip out the entire <meta keywords> line, right?

Not so fast; I recently learned that leaving some keywords in (the right ones) can have an unexpected benefit: As fodder for internal site searches…

You know, when you go to a website and type a word or phrase in the “Search” field usually found in the upper right corner - and it delivers up a listing of all the pages within that site that have relevant content. (Or that’s how it supposed to work.)

You want to put 3 or 4 of you best keywords/phrases for each page in its <meta keywords> line. That way, you help your site visitors find stuff and stay on Google’s good side.

SSO - Site Search Optimization (I know, another acryonym, isn’t it grand!) deserves a second look. While I’m in my clients’ source code from now on, I’ll be - judiciously - putting in some words that serve as signposts to popular content…. making that ubiquitious Search bar the useful tool it’s meant to be.