Mr NavyCS Meta Keyword Test

The Mrnavycs Keyword Test

June 13th, 2007

I had a desire to test the relevancy of the keyword meta tag and the title attribute due to the continuous questions posed on the various SEO forums. I will write my conclusions and expect some argument/discussion based on my findings from this really small test. :crazy:

I placed the word mrnavycs on a couple of different sites, one page had the keyword meta and another page on a different site the mrnavycs was placed in the title attribute (title=”mrnavycs”). I also placed the term “mesethelioma” on a page as to test against other sites as to ranking - mesethelioma was chosen because of the limited number of sites who attempt to rank for this misspelled word.

The test is not yet complete but I do have a couple of interesting things to report. All of the pages concerned have not yet been cached and it may be another week or two before that happens and I can produce solid results. That being said here is what I noticed so far…

The page with the title attribute has been indexed and cached with the mrnavycs data. None of the top three search engines report the data on the page via a search. Conclusion, this was not a surprise, the title attribute plays no roll in search engine placement. Continue to use the title attribute where it helps the customer/visitor but not because you think it helps your placement!

In the picture above you see the result of the AdSense Preview tool on the page where mesethelioma was placed in the keyword meta tag. It is the only instance of the word on the page or even the site for that matter. I noticed shortly after adding the word that I would get the occasional ad for something to do with mesothelioma - this to me proves Google’s media bot isn’t as picky as the big brother when it comes to deciphering the content on a page. Where I found this interesting, ensure you follow Google’s terms of service completely when it pertains to the use of AdSense!

Yahoo has indexed the page with mrnavycs in the meta keywords. A search for mrnavycs in Yahoo does produce a result - Yahoo does use the meta keywords when determining content on a page. How much Yahoo gives credit to the keyword meta has yet to be determined - when more pages become cached I can come to a better conclusion. But, since Yahoo does list a page where the only instance of the word is in the meta keywords it may have some use after-all. At this point I do not think the meta keywords add weight, my sites do not have the keywords meta and I rank very well for my targeted keywords but the use may be in the misspelled and country variances of words, IE colour and color - so if you are targeting “costume jewellery” you may want to place “costume jewelery” in your keyword meta for the benefit of your “other” English speaking customers. I do not recommend repeating a word or phrase already in normal content.

Like I said, more to come as the data comes in. B)

Update: My conclusions are in.