Differentiating through META Keywords

"I recently launched a website promoting a new magazine for parents distributed through public schools. I've tried META keywords and description tags using your advice, but the words I chose don't seem to differentiate me. What am I doing or where am I thinking wrong?" -- Doug Damerst, Wisdom Press LLC

The META description tag can help in ranking, but these days the META keyword tag isn't used for ranking by any major search engine. I'd still construct your webpages using META keyword tags, however, especially if you are doing paid inclusion through Inktomi. Who knows? In a year or two search engines could start using it again.

Search engines are now looking for webpages with good content. Make sure your important keywords appear in the Title tag, Headings (H2, H3, etc.), hyperlinked words, and your body text, especially in the first sentence or paragraph. Link popularity (the number of in-coming links to your site) makes a lot of difference, too, especially with Google. The best learning tool I've found for search engine optimization (SEO) is WebPosition Gold software (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/webposition.htm). Its tutorial approach, especially in the up-to-date Page Critic tool, can promote you from a novice to an expert if you are diligent to read the help files and follow their recommendations.