Many people still seem to think that building a website will mean they will appear at the top of Google for the products they sell. Then they think that the answer is to add keywords to their homepage. Obviously, it is natural for a webmasters is to to want their website ranking in the top of Google’s search results, but with so many factors determining ranking, it can sometimes seem an endless battle in getting all the elements right on your site.

Well, Google’s Matt Cutts has confirmed there is definitely one task you can remove from your list.

Matt was recently asked if spending time optimising keyword meta tags is actually useful. His short answer was: “Don’t waste your time!”

Keyword meta tags are not used by Google in determining your ranking, so concentrate your efforts on the other meta tags, especially the title & description tags, which may be used in the search results if Google sees them as being useful.

A keyword rich title tag together with an effective & relevant description meta data can be very useful in enticing searchers to click on your search engine listing, as they think they will find good information on your page.

So, you should definitely spend time on title & description meta tags, but Matt says he personally wouldn’t spend any time at all on keyword meta tags.

Google have given webmasters a strong indication that the speed of a website may become an organic ranking factor in 2010!

Here’s what Google’s Matt Cutts has to say on the issue:

“Historically we haven’t used it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast, it should be a good experience and so it’s fair to say if you’re a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus, or if you have an awfully slow site, maybe users don’t want that as much.”

Google already considers page load times as part of the AdWords quality score, so it’s a logical step for this to be included in organic listings too.

While it’s unlikely to have a huge impact on rankings (there are over 200 other factors) it would be worth preparing for its introduction ahead of time and get your site loading as fast as possible. Here are a couple of tools which can help you get started:

• Google’s Page Speed Tool – This is a firefox plugin from Google that enables you to see which areas of your site need improvement.
• WebPageTest.org – Another speed tool which provides optimization recommendations and other interesting stats.

Search engine optimisation can be very time consuming for small business owners, not to mention often expensive if you outsource to professional SEO companies. I’ve recently been quoted a price of £500 per month, for a period of 12 months, to promote just one of my sites, which is way above my limits!

Google says it understands that many small business owners and webmaster don’t have the time or funds and are offering some quick DIY tips.

“Google Guru” Matt Cutts has put his top SEO tips into a video. It’s not particularly long but does give some good tips for webmaster or business owners new to SEO.

Here’s the video: