Google does not use the “keywords” meta tag in its web search ranking. Google’s Matt Cutts explains this in a Webmaster Central video. This is not breaking news, by any means, but there are a lot of people out there that still put a lot of stock into this.

In fact, Cutts mentions that people have sued each other for meta tag keyword theft, when really this is just a waste of everybody’s time, because they don’t even play a role in the ranking of sites on Google!!.

WTF?

“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,” says Cutts. “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.”

Just because Google ignores the “keywords” meta tag, that doesn’t mean it ignores all meta tags. In fact, there are several that the search engine definitely uses. For one, Google sometimes uses the “description” meta tag as the text for search results snippets. But even in then, the “description” meta tag isn’t used to influence ranking.

Google also recognizes the “google,” “robots,” “verify-v1,” “content type,” and “refresh” meta tags. Information about how Google understands these can be found at this page in the Webmaster Tools help center.

“It’s possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it’s unlikely,” Cutts says of the “keywords” meta tag. “Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently we see no need to change that policy.”

So the moral of the story is, if a competitor is jacking your keywords, and using them in their own “keywords” meta tag, this will have no effect whatsoever in how they rank in Google when compared to your site. Cutts says other search engines might use the information, but Google doesn’t.

Google does note that its enterprise Search Appliance has the ability to match meta tags, but this is of course separate from Google web search.

As I have said before, these videos and other tips Google frequently gives out are worth paying attention to for any webmaster looking to rank well. Whether they’re talking about duplicate content, meta tags, or paid links, they’re all aimed at telling webmasters how it is, and clarifying any misconceptions to the contrary. Whether you agree with Google’s methods in all cases or not, the tips are for your benefit.

Like it or not, Google controls what people find on the web when they search. The company’s huge market share is just something that is. There is always the possibility that could change in the future, but at this point, it looks like webmasters are not going to be able to ignore Google for a long time, if they hope to be found on the web by searchers.

We realize (and Google surely does too) that many well-seasoned marketers already know that Google ignores the “keywords” meta tag, but webmasters are born everyday, and not all of them have been so heavily seasoned to this point, and that’s why Google puts this information out there. There is always misinformation (particularly when it comes to search), and sometimes the record just has to be set straight. Who better to do that than Google itself?

So what you think about this?

Step back for a moment and envision a Quality Score-free world – a world in which as long as your CTR is above 0.5%, your ads would run. A world where you can bid $0.05, and your ads would run. Sound like a dream world? A world of limitless profits? world where you make money online ?

WRONG! Here’s what would happen as competition increases in this Google Slap-free, zero-Quality Score world:

More and more advertisers – meaning a flood of affiliates with ugly one-page landing pages ( thrown together with Microsoft FrontPage) flooding every possible niche and market out there. As a result, the bid prices will rise higher, and higher, and HIGHER.
• Eventually, the bid prices will get so high that most advertisers will be squeaking by with a tiny ROI, or breaking even just acquiring a customer (NOT good for affiliates doing CPA). And forget about the people still bidding $0.05; they’re on page 12. So, here are Google’s reasons behind introducing an increasingly stringent Quality Score:
• They want to keep raising the bar on the quality to make sure the user experience is high.
• They want to make sure their advertisers are always making a nice profit.

I want you to really think about this. As Google raises the bar for any given niche/keyword, more advertisers will have their ads bumped. This way Google can assure that bid prices stay low enough so that the advertisers that don’t get bumped are making good profits. A smaller supply of advertisers means lower bid prices, and more profits for advertisers that survive the Google slaps.

Here’s something Google sneaked into the Landing Page Quality Score not too long ago: They now want to know how fast your site loads up. Why? Think about it — it is ALL about the user experience. If searchers are clicking on ads, and it takes three minutes to load the landing page, those searchers are going to be angry about it. If they’re angry, they’re less likely to click on an ad in the future. As a result, Google’s revenue takes a hit. As long as you don’t load your site with tons of graphics and complicated code, you’ll be okay.

Website Bounce Rate

Now some of you are wondering: “What in the world is a bounce rate anyway?” Here’s a startling fact: 80-90% of people who visit your website — or most any website, for that matter – hit the back button within 10 seconds. Ten seconds! If someone spends roughly 10 seconds or less on your site, it’s called a bounce. They basically hit your page and immediately hit the back button, because either they didn’t find what they were looking for or couldn’t figure out what the heck your site was about. Here are some steps you can take to improve your bounce rate:
• Make sure you’re bidding on targeted keywords
• Have a big list of negative keywords; this will improve your keyword targeting
• Follow the landing page guidelines  – you need to have the key elements above the fold so the visitor knows exactly what the page is about in less than 10 seconds

Google Manual Reviews

Here is something that Google does NOT want you to know about: After you launch your site, at some point – it could be two hours, or it could be weeks – someone at Google will manually review your site. Imagine what Heidi, who has a Ph.D. from Stanford, will think when she’s perusing your site? I can guarantee you she won’t like anything that resembles an affiliate site. She especially won’t like three-page sites. This is why it’s critically important that your site looks professional, and that your site has value added content in the form of reviews and/or links to informational articles, etc. Ever launched an affiliate campaign that just killed for a day or two, and then suddenly your first page bids went way up and your traffic plummeted? Guess what happened? You guessed it – the manual review.

Profitable advertisers are happy advertisers that will continue to give millions of dollars to Google! I don’t know about you, but I’m super excited about this! If you are willing to comply with Google Quality Score rules, you’re just going to keep making more and more money! And you know what? Most affiliates won’t comply with Google. That’s more profit for me, and YOU if you take my advice!

Let me tell you an interesting story about the impact that something called AdWords Account History and Account Quality Score can have on your campaign performance. About a month ago, I launched a PPC campaign in which I send traffic to a site that i quietly been building up for a long time.
This site has hundreds of articles, PR, age, history, laser-targeted landing pages with highly relevant content, the works!

I launched this campaign on one of my newer Google accounts that I was using primarily for testing campaigns. I was shocked to discover that most of my keywords were disabled with an OK-to-poor Quality Score! Now, here’s the kicker – I paused this campaign, and launched it on my main Google account (one I’ve had since I’ve started), and ALL MY KEYWORDS BECOME ACTIVE. In fact, my Quality Score was GREAT and my minimum bids were all between $0.03 and $0.05! My CPC also dropped from around $0.47 per click to $0.30 per click! AMAZING! So what happened?

This is where Account History and Account Quality Score comes in.

Account History

There have been widespread claims in the SEM world that people who have had Google accounts for years have a significant advantage (in terms of lower click costs) over newbies who are just starting out. Google claims that it takes only four months to overcome the disadvantage of having a new account. What stinks is that when you first start a new account, you could be paying 30-60% more per click than you otherwise would, just for having a new account! Why does Google do this? Simple. When you’re just starting out, Google sees you as a credit risk. After about four months of consistent payments, Google no longer sees you as a risk. So don’t sweat it. The longer you’re in the business the easier it gets. No joke!

Account Quality Score

Yes, there’s an Account Quality Score. This is basically some kind of crazy sum of all the Quality Scores of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. The better your Account Quality Score, the lower the CPC and minimum bids you will get. But, you may ask, “How can I use this to my advantage? Whenever I start a new campaign, I frequently get a low CTR before I optimize the campaign, and sometimes my Quality Score is REALLY bad.” Great question. Here’s an easy 4 step trick:

1. Open two Google accounts.
2. Your first Google account is for testing and optimizing campaigns only.
3. Once you have a fully optimized campaign that has a good Quality Score and high CTR, pause it and move it over to your second Google account.
4. Call this your “Gold” Google account where you put ONLY fully optimized campaigns.

Do this and you will discover that since the “Gold” Google account has only high Quality Score and high CTR campaigns, your Account Quality Score will be KILLER. You’ll get amazingly low CPC and TONS of traffic. So now do you understand why switching my campaign to another Google account made such a huge difference?

Campaign History and Quality Score

Now some of you have heard that when you first start a new AdWords campaign, you’ll get a high click cost and/or poor ad positions until you’ve built some history. This is called your Campaign History. But how long do you have to build history on a new campaign, anyway? Again, according to Google, it takes approximately two weeks to build up a Campaign History.

So over the first two weeks of building up a campaign, expect your traffic to increase and your CPC to drop as your history builds.

Campaign Quality Score

In these first two weeks, a Campaign Quality Score is also established by Google, which is the weighted sum of your CTR, LPQS, and Quality Score of your keywords and ads.

You know how they say first impressions are lasting? Well, that’s the case with campaign Quality Score. The campaign QS you establish in the first two weeks will be mighty hard to change. This is why I tell you in Module 4 to start with a smaller, more targeted keyword list BEFORE you go crazy stuffing thousands of lateral and long-tail keywords in your campaign. If you can start out with a good CTR on your campaign right off the bat, it will make a big difference on the long-term performance of your campaign.

Three Action Steps

1. Use two Google accounts – one for testing, and another one for your optimized campaigns.

2. Start with a small, highly targeted keywords list for the first two weeks of a new campaign to build a good campaign QS.

3. Be patient; once you build four months of Google account history, things will be MUCH better

Why Bother with Google?

I know some of you are thinking: “The heck with Google! Why should I do all this work just to make Google happy?” Or, maybe you’re using stronger language than that. Even after reading the the last six simple steps, I bet many of you will decide NOT to follow them! When the Google Slap had first hit, I found hardly one affiliate who was actually interested in making a Google-happy site. Most of them wanted to find a workaround to the system. Some affiliates decided that they’ll just change their display and destination URL every time a Google Slap comes around. Changing URLs seems to work so far. To be honest, that’s what I initially did. As far as I’m concerned, however, this is just the lazy affiliate mindset! You may think you can outsmart Google, and you may be able to do it in the short run. But honestly don’t you think Big G will catch on? I mean, come on; they hire the top minds in the world.

Advantages of Playing by Google Rules

Here are some of the advantages of playing by the rules and building a real site for Google:

• You never have to worry about future Google Slaps.

• If you set up targeted landing pages with unique relevant content, chances are your conversions will take a jump (yes, people ACTUALLY read the content on your site, especially if it’s relevant).

• You’ll have a competitive advantage over other affiliates, since most affiliates will try to dodge the rules. Your Quality Score will continue to improve over time as you grow your site and make more targeted landing pages, and you’ll receive more and more traffic.

• As you keep growing your site, you’ll get more and more free search engine traffic in the long run.

• Your site will look and feel like a real website; again, this will help your conversions.

Some affiliates may have 30 affiliate sites and dread the idea of having to add content to every one of them. However, I would take this approach:

Chances are that you make 80% of your profits from the top 20% of your sites. Build up just those sites.

I personally know super affiliates who have dozens of affiliate sites and make very good money. But let me ask you, how “long term” do you think this approach is? Click costs are going up every year, markets are becoming more and more competitive, and Google will continue to tighten its landing page “quality” score requirements. In fact, Google does not want people throwing up quick landing pages to make a fast buck. Instead, it wants people building and growing real sites, just like you would build and grow a real business! (There is a tip in that!) So sure, the “let’s make 20 affiliate sites a month” approach may work in the short run; but in the long run, you’re dead in the water! There is no way you’re going to be able to keep up with the increasing competition in dozens of different markets plus the increasingly strict Google Quality Score requirements.

The Bottom Line

You need to build a small handful of affiliate sites and keep growing them, split testing your pages, and responding to the market changes, etc. Over time, your affiliate sites will become powerhouses, bringing in MASSIVE sales from both PPC and free search engine traffic.