Google Doesn’t Care About Your Keyword Metatags

Search Engine Optimization For Lawyers

One of the things I teach my lawyer students is search engine optimization, and how to increase their position in the search engines. After all, where you show up in Google is a critical element of your online legal marketing efforts. Optimize your website properly and you’re way ahead of the game – focus on the wrong stuff and you’re spinning your wheels.

One of the wrong things that most lawyers focus on is the concept of “keyword metatags.” Those are the words that you stick in the top of the website’s code to (theoretically) let Google and the other players know what the site is all about. Lawyers obsess over the keyword metatags in their law firm websites and blogs, they hire expensive search engine optimization “experts” (and I use the term lightly) for thousands of dollars a month to help in their efforts.

They spin their wheels.

Meanwhile, my websites and blogs contain the most generic keywords. Why? Because I’ve long maintained that Google does not use the “keywords” meta tag in its web search ranking. Red herring, says I.

Now, Google comes out with the truth. And I’m pretty happy to report that I was correct all along. On the Google Webmaster Central Blog, the definitive statement (there’s a video to go with it) is as follows:

Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.

About a decade ago, search engines judged pages only on the content of web pages, not any so-called “off-page” factors such as the links pointing to a web page. In those days, keyword meta tags quickly became an area where someone could stuff often-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords. Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.

So next time some fancy-pants legal search engine optimization “expert” corners you at a convention or bombards you by phone, remember – it ain’t the metatags that do the trick. It’s the content.

Photo courtesy of Danard Vincente.
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  • Unfortunately the SEO scams seem to target just about everyone. Google has for years said the best way to get a better rank is to write better content (thus having people want to link to it) -- people should really believe them. I've encountered a number of business owners who believe (or want to believe) that there is some magic tag or something that will make their site outrank all of their competitors. What people have to get is that Google is trying to provide the best and most relevant content to the searcher. If you could override that with a tag, Google wouldn't be doing their job. There are a few things you should do to make your site easily searchable, but beyond that, focus on content.
  • JayFleischman
    Great comment, Ben - thanks for the insight. Content truly is king, with off-page SEO techniques serving as a means of boosting PageRank and enabling your site or blog to begin attracting viewer attention.
  • Michael
    This is not new news. Google disclosed this years ago and created "Adwords" as their pay to play substitute.
  • JayFleischman
    Absolutely correct, Michael. Problem is that most lawyers are getting scammed by SEO "experts" who claim otherwise, and spend thousands of dollars each month just on keyword metatags.
  • Michael
    You're right, I was a computer geek long before I was an attorney and consequently I don't fall for salesman misdirection in the computer world.
  • paulawoolley
    You are absolutely correct Jay! I think the word is getting out there slowly to attorneys, but there are still so many that are still taken by SEO scammers who are using this as a ploy. Thank you for spreading the word!
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