“Charlie bit me” is a youtube video that got more than 6 million views worldwide. Because of its popularity it is has been made the subject of several spoofs which features two not so cute adults trying hard to copy the innocent, unrehearsed acts of the two kids featured in the original video.

The video has been added about 9 months ago, the exact date is May 22, 2007. To date, it has received a total of 7,764 comments and has been “favorited “43,030 times.

As of today, it has been mentioned in 106,000 website. Since google search for the video has reached a certain amount of volume, statistics for the search of the keyword “charlie bit me” has started to show in google trends. (Take note that Google trends only shows graphs when searches for a popular keyword reaches a certain volume)

So popular is the video that the phrase “Charlie bit me” itself has been used by several webmasters and several venture capitalist to make money out of. In fact the mother of the boys commented, “I have noticed that the phrase Charlie bit me is catching on and people are trying to profit of it . . .”

The parents is starting to realize that there is income to be made through utilizing the high volume of traffic that the popular youtube video and the popular keyword “Charlie bit me” has brought. In order not to be left behind by other venture capitalist, the parents are making available to the public the “Charlie bit me” t-shirt series.

The parents did the right thing considering that the video features their kids and they were the ones who uploaded the video. It should be them that should be the first to benefit from the popularity and the high volume of traffic that the video has brought.

Certainly the video is so cute and the British accent adds to its attraction. (Several “Charlie bit me” spoofs are not so cute at all; in fact I would say that they are lame)

If there is one lesson that can be learned from this “Charlie bit me phenomenon” or “Charlie bit me craze” that is that CONTENT IS STILL KING. No matter what other Search Engine Optimization (SEO) gurus say, in the end its still “The content stupid.” Most of “Charlie bit me” fans know about the video through word of mouth. It is quite obvious that people who do not know about the video knew about this through others and not by searching for “funny videos” over the internet. I doubt if the parents of these kid did some advertisement, tried to increase their back links, released several press releases, bought some articles are bought text link or google ads. The “Charlie bit me” video has become so popular because people liked the content. In fact they go crazy over it. It’s funny and it’s cute. Of course I am not underestimating the importance of SEO strategies and techniques, however in the end, high volume sustainable traffic to your site is mainly due to rich content.

Oh by the way, if you really like the video I really recommend that you buy the shirt.

Source: increasing traffic to your site

Meta tags have 2 components to them, a name and a content section. When we are talking about meta tags, as far as SEO is concerned, we really are referring to the keyword and description meta tags. Do you see that the keyword meta tag is a common separated list of words and the description is a statement of what this page is about? Good.

Lets see what all the fuss is about.

Back in the early days of the Internet, circa 1995-1998, it was possible to rank in the number one position based solely on the values that you had in your keyword and description meta tags. But pretty soon, the search engines caught on to what was happening, and started to discount the values in the keyword and description meta tags ( just meta tags from here on out). In fact, if the search saw that you were stuffing keywords in the meta tags just for rankings, they’d reduce your rank based on that fact.

Well, fast-forward to 2008, and the meta tags are no longer the sole way to rank at the top, but are they still useful? Most critics say, Yes, use them, but use them wisely. Why? Well a few reasons. Most of it has to do with how each search engine is using the meta tags. Google mostly ignores the meta tags, except that it does seem to verify that the meta tags are corroborating the story of the rest of the page. So make sure that you have relevant information, but don’t just stuff keywords in there. The best advice is, be natural. And Yahoo and MSN use the description meta tag as the result of searches. So this is what surfers see in the search engine listings, so making sure that the description meta tag is informative is extremely important if you are going to attract those search engine surfers.

So… what’s the verdict?

I use the meta tags on every single page, and I make sure that the meta tags are unique and relevant to the information that is on that page (yes, it takes time and effort). But the effort is well worth it. Even if the difference is only a fraction of a point, if it is the difference between 1st on page 2 or last on page 1, in this case, I’ll take last place (since it really is number 1). So what should you do if your SEO consultant highlights this activity as his main course? Pass on this offer, and keep looking for an SEO consultant that has some more experience. Meta tags are a great way to squeeze an extra ounce of juice, but for the real flesh, there are other activities that can make you jump several pages of results in one motion. Check out last weeks article on SEO and title tags for the single best on page SEO technique that you can use.

Let’s run a quick experiment. Being a scientist, I really like experiments (didn’t know I was a scientist? Read more about me) For this experiment, I want you to pull out your business card. What email address does it have? Whose name are you branding? Yours or theirs? You see, the idea for your business card is to brand you, not a fortune 500 company. Now, take a look at your stack of business cards that you’ve collected in the past year. If you don’t have any, that’s OK, just pay attention the next time you see a business card. Now whose name are they branding?

And while you’re looking at the card and the brand, evaluate the level of professionalism and community brand that they portray. Likely what you’ll find is that those that are super professional and brand aware, will have their own brand on the email address, while those that are starting out or don’t know any better, will be branding someone else.

So what do you do to brand yourself? For starters, call the printing press!

You have a domain right? For this article, I assume that you have one. Instead of using your favorite I-love-cats-and-dogs@msn.com, you should really be utilizing your domain name… so if your website is at cats-and-dogs.com you can make a catchy email address for youself, like lover@cats-and-dogs.com or for a general information account you can use info@cats-and-dogs.com or another commonly accepted email address would be sales@cats-and-dogs.com for the sales dept. It is also purrr-fectly (sorry I couldn’t resist) acceptable to use your name as part of the brand - so if your name is Brian Tracy, you could have any of the following - just pick one that suits your taste : brian.tracy@cats-and-dogs.com, btracy@cats-and-dogs.com or briant@cats-and-dogs.com or just plain ol brian@cats-and-dogs.com …. but notice that every single one of them says cats-and-dogs.com … that is an extra hook to get them to recognize your brand and website.

Other than your email address, I highly recommend that you have your website listed on your business card as well. Sometimes there’s not enough room, but if you have a site on your card that isn’t yours, then ditch it too! What do I mean by that? if you have a site like yahoo.com/~cats-and-dogs/ then you aren’t branding you, you’re branding Yahoo. So turn the tables in your favor, and use a website like www.cats-and-dogs.com

Is branding limited to a business card? Absolutely not! Anywhere you put your name (well almost anywhere - your bank might look at you funny if you sign your name with an @ in the middle), is a great candidate for placing your brand. Letterhead, brochures, proposals,email signatures, and auto-responders are some exceptional places to put your brand.

So with all the buzz surrounding Search Engine Optimization (SEO), how do you know where to start? Well, as with most things, approach a large daunting task the same way that you approach eating an elephant - One bite at a time! Now, there are many different techniques, strategies, tactics, methods and approaches to SEO, so where do I start? With the title. You see, the page title gives visitors the same “impression” that a book title gives you. It’s not meant to tell the whole story - that’s what the book is for.

OK. So how does a search engine view the title? The same way as librarian. You see, a librarian is more than just a person that you ask “where’s the reference section?” - they are also the ones that are in charge of viewing the library as a collection, and knowing when something is old - as in an antique , or old - as in just plain outdated, or knowing when something needs to be added to the collection, and above all, where to get the book. So how does a librarian know how to categorize a book? Well, she’ll start with the title.

Think about this for a moment. If you have your business name as the title, where does that fit? What does she know about your business name, in relation to putting the book on the shelf? Now image that your business is “ServPro Of Grand Junction” what does it tell you about what services they provide? Wouldn’t “Cleanup and restoration services for fire, water and mold in Grand Junction” be more descriptive? A heck of a lot better right?

So now we’ve gotten you to see and believe that a business name is a lousy page title, so what makes a great page title? Well, for starters, don’t make it too long. Somewhere around 50-75 characters has worked well for me. Then you need to consider what keywords your page is targeting. This of course assumes that you’ve done some keyword research. If you haven’t, don’t fret, just make a best guess on what you think your top 3 keywords are that people would search to find you. So when you put your title together, put together as many 3, 4 & 5 word combination’s that you can think of that are relevant to your page, using targeted keywords where you can ( but don’t overdo it, unless it makes human sense). These phrases can be an item description, a category description, a description of services you provide, or any descriptive phrase about your business that makes sense.

Make sure that you are making these reviews based on this particular page that you are working on, not your entire site. So yes, this means that you need a fresh and unique page title per web page. Now that you have a few phrases put together, put 2 or 3 of them together, separated by a ‘ | ‘ or a ‘ - ‘ . Don’t make this a keyword list either. The phrases need to make sense to your visitors. Why is this so important? Because your page title is what is used as the main heading in search engine results. So this title must make sense to them for the terms that they are shopping for.

So what are some examples?

Try the popular Google search for ‘wedding favors’. Do you see the title for ‘My Wedding Favors - Unique Wedding Favors - Bridal Shower Favors’. If you look on this results page, you’ll see that they’re all fairly similar. Short descriptive phrases.

Try a Google search on ‘Dude Ranch’ and you get the results of ‘The Dude Ranchers’ Association: Over 100 of the best Dude Ranch …’ — pretty descriptive of what they are and do.

So what would a bad example look like? Well, I took the Google search for ‘Dude Ranch’ and went to page 10 or so, and found this ‘TriangleX Ranch - Moose, Wyoming’ Is it really a dude ranch? It didn’t convince me, so I didn’t click on it to find out.

And out of this bad example, did you notice something? yep! 10 bonus points to you… bad titles go on later result pages, and good titles go on the first result pages… it’s a no brainer that you’re going to need a great title to make number one!

edit: There was a slight hangup with the WP-SuperCache plugin with the expires time. Modified my httpd.conf file, and Presto! All is working. Thanks all for noticing, and letting me know that there was a problem.