A few years ago, the link was well established. Google seemed to be attempting to stop its search results being flooded by spammy newcomer websites by valuing a website’s domain age heavily in determing search results. This did work, but the problem was that it also kept new sites that were of high quality out of the top of the results. In essence, it was a temporary fix to a permanent problem.

Then, in late 2006 and early 2007, SEO consultants all over the place watched as some of their respected clients suddenly dropped off the top 10 list. This led to many SEO “experts” claiming that Google had dropped domain age from its ranking algorithm.

Over the last 12 months, many SEO experts have come out and stated that Google has reinstated domain age into their algorithm, as many older sites are now performing much better. It is this humble SEO consultant’s opinion, that domain age is in the algorithm, but only in a limited form.

The practice of domain selling, where companies buy a domain name now, hold onto it for five years or so, and then sell it, has meant that it is not effective to weight domain age too heavily.

The feeling out there now is that Google is using other factors, such as traffic, content and backlinks, to determine a website’s authority. This explains why some SEO’s seem to think domain age is still critical, because for the most part, it is safe to assume that a site that has good traffic, content and backlinks has been around for a while. But it appears that some SEO consultant’s are mixing up correlation and causation.

By weighting traffic, network monitoring, content and backlinks (amongst other things) more heavily, Google are effectively removing those spammy sites from their results but also allowing young sites that have plenty to offer rank well.

It seems that Google may have finally found the balance.

In short, it is difficult for new sites to zoom up the Google rankings, but the age of the domain is not the reason for this. New sites struggle because they don’t have traffic or backlinks to help their ranking. By the same token, older sites will not rank well just because they have been around for ten years.

So while there does exist a correlation between the age of website’s domain and its search engine performance in general, the actual causation for this is most likely a string of other factors that more comprehensively determine a site’s authority, and hence its relevance to search results.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and is the process undertaken by SEO companies and individuals to optimise a website for appearance in keyword-based search results in search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN and more.

The aim of any SEO initiative is to increase a website’s ranking for a given search term. A website’s ranking refers to its place on the list of search results when a user searches a term.

For an example, let’s use the ficticious business “Reload Pies.” Say Reload Pies sells homemade gourmet pies from a store in Brisbane. A search in Google for “Brisbane gourmet pies” may see Reload Pies appear fourth on the list. We would therefore say that Reload Pies’ ranking is number four on the first page in Google for the search term “Brisbane gourmet pies.” A website’s ranking is different for each search term and in each search engine.

The aim of SEO, therefore, is to increase Reload Pies’ ranking so that it appears first. For the search term “Brisbane gourmet pies”, Reload Pies’ website would need to be optimised, using a variety of SEO techniques to improve it’s overall ranking.

The reason SEO is such a time-consuming process is because this whole process has to be repeated for each keyword that Reload Pies wants to target. Each keyword also has to continually be re-optimised because the way in which search engines rank results continues to change and because competitors can also perform SEO.

For that reason, many business choose to use professional SEO consultant companies.

SEO Tip #01

One of the most important factors when it comes to your website’s performance in search engine results is the keywords meta tag.

The keyword meta tag is embedded in the HTML code of your web page and is read by search engines during their indexing process. The keyword tag allows you to specify what search keywords you would like to appear for in search results.

But don’t think that you can just add whatever keywords you like and appear in every search results page from then on. Google (and other search engines) have systems in place to deal with excessive keyword meta tags.

The practice of filling your meta tags with large numbers of keywords is called keyword spamming and is a very quick way of being booted out of a search engine for spamming. The jury is still out on exactly how many keywords is too many. Some “experts” argue for no more than 50 while others are as conservative as five.

There are also some pundits out there who claim that 13 is the magic number. Recent results from our SEO campaigns suggest that keeping to 25 keywords and below is optimal. However, keyword relevance is also important. If you have 32 keywords for instance, but all of them appear in your web page copy numerous times (in context and not just stuffed in there for the sake of it), then that will most likely be perfectly acceptable. However the reverse is also true. You might only have 12 keyword meta tags but if none of those keywords are relevant to your content then you may be blacklisted for spamming.

But still you can write good content, fill your keyword meta tags properly and submit your site to search engines and still not get any traffic. In this case the reason is most probably your choice of keywords. Keyword meta tags should not be too specific to the point where no-one would ever search that term or too broad to the point where there is way too much competition to appear. Getting the right keywords into your site is critical to search engine performance. An SEO company can help you determine what keywords are being used to search your industry and provide advice on how to change your content to match.

But don’t expect to just go ahead and optimise your keyword meta tags and suddenly appear #1 in Google. SEO is made up of more than just keyword tags, and for this reason SEO is an on-going process that is very time consuming. For the average business, it is not cost-efficient to employ someone to look solely after your company’s SEO and at the same time not time-efficient to get someone already in your business to take up the responsibility.

Fortunately, web strategists, such as Reload Media specialise in SEO programs, which manage your keyword meta tags in the context of your overall SEO program. These programs are cost effective, last for at least 12 months, and ensure that your site is getting top-of-the-line optimisation from specialists who are paid to know everything there is to know about search engines.

So while keyword meta tags are important to a website’s search engine performance, they are just one slice of the overall SEO pie.