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.

I’ve been carrying out a lot of link building on Cashback Shopper as its Google rankings have pretty much vanished & I’m keen to recover them. I wonder if it’s because the site is a white label & Google has decided it’s just duplicate content.

However, a recent ranking check of Bing has revealed that Cashback Shopper has 15 page 1 positions, 5 on page 2 & 5 on page 3, for some of the most popular search terms relating to cashback shopping. This is how the site used to feature in Google, so I hope these positions aren’t just temporary until Bing picks up a market share of searchers.

It’s very frustrating that Cashback Shopper is in no4 spot for “cashback shopping” and “cashback uk” in Bing, but neither phrase is anywhere in Google! I guess I just have to keep trying to find more Google worthy links for the site