Meta tags info...

I have a question to ask about Meta tag content in the 'source'.

I have been told that it is advisable to put a different meta tag description for each page of your website. With this in mind what is the best info to put in the small space allowed? Am I right in thinking that the right 'keywords' are necessary here?

We seem to get different advice from different people about the order of title, description, keywords on the source page.

Any good advice would be great. Many thanks in advance.

Regards

Sue


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www.weald-business-solutions.co.uk sue@weald-business-solutions.co.uk

Re : Meta tags info

Hi Sue

From what I am aware, and what I usually do, it is best to put your main keywords first for title, meta keywords and meta description.

For Title - try and use your main keywords at the start instead of just your company name. These should be relevant to each page on your site.

For Meta Keywords - dont use too many, maybe 15 or so. And use your most important ones at the beginning.

For Meta Description - again, use your main search terms first and keep them relevant to the page as this is what will be displayed in the search engines.

Overture and Google are great for finding the most searched for keywords that you may want to include in your tags and site.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-suggestions-overture/

I have 2 options on my site for how all these are entered displayed.

Some pages have the titles, keywords and descriptions all auto generated depending on the pages content. This way I do not not have to worry too much about doing it all manually, the automated process uses certain criteria to pick out the keywords and works perfectly. This may not work for all sites though, mine is a dynamic site with category selections so it has a keyword base to choose from.

I also have a CMS option for other pages that I add to the site where I have options to easily add Title, Meta Keywords and Meta Description. These I make unique to each page added.

It makes a massive difference. I has a bug in my CMS option and had 20 pages go live with the same meta tags, none of the pages ranked. Once the problem was solved and Google recognized the new tags, every page was ranked in Google in the first 2 pages of the rankings. Some at page one position one, within a week.

Hope this helps you!

Matt
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Re : Meta tags info

Hi Matt,

Many thanks for the info. I must admit it is all rather difficult to take in - we have never done this before.

You say that on your site some pages have the titles, keywords and descriptions all auto generated. Do you have to have a special programme for this? I have been writing them and sending them to our webman to insert, page by page. I have only entered about 5 keywords/phrases per page as these are the only relevant ones I can come up with. Is there a keyword website out there that doesn't charge for ideas?

We have only just amended our meta tags and descriptions, so I hope they help. But you say it takes about a week for Google to recognise them?

Thanks for you comments

Sue
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www.weald-business-solutions.co.uk sue@weald-business-solutions.co.uk

Re : Meta tags info

Hi Sue

The 2 sites I mentioned in my previous message generate keyword suggestions and show you how many people are likely to do a search under these keywords.

You should talk to your webman about installing CMS, content management systems, for your site. It is just daft to be asking him to do little things like title and keyword changes. With a CMS system you should have access to easily change all content and meta keywords on your site without the need for playing with the source code. Every web designer "should" install CMS for you. If he wont/cant whatever I can have my designer install one for you at a nominal fee.

Depending on how often Google crawls your site it can take a few hours to a few weeks for Google to recognize them. Even then it may crawl your site and decide not to update them till it has crawled a few times.

Hope this helps! Anything else u need to know fire away, im no expert but i can do my best

Mat
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Re : Meta tags info

With regard the meta keyword and meta description tags:

The meta keywords tag is virtually ignored by all sites so no need to put time and effort into that, many now ignore the field.

The one that really counts is the meta description - write a very accurate summary of the page content in one to two sentences, that's all you need to do.

Tim

Re : Meta tags info

In agree with Tim, the meta keywords are not really counted towards ranking anymore, however, they should still be added. A decent CMS system so you can do these things yourself is a fantastic tool for any website owner.

Matt
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Re : Meta tags info

Some good advice in this thread
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Web Design

Re : Meta tags info

Here's one for you - do different search engines emphasise different meta tags more than others?

Re : Meta tags info

Hi Chris

All the major ones (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, AOL, ASK and Live) use meta tags in a very similar way. To the extent that it is possible to tell anyway. SEO is not an exact science but the consensus is that the larger ones at least work very similarly.

Matt
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Re : Meta tags info

Hi Chris

In general it's true that the meta description will be considered of some importance whilst the meta keywords are of almost zero importance (perhaps even zero in some cases).

One difference is that, for instance, Google will display the meta description along with the listing when the site matches a search, whilst some other search engines will instead use the first couple of lines of text from the page, for instance.

Dan
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Web Design

Re : Meta tags info

The meta description tag will not help you with ranking... not directly... the words you place within them will not be indexed by Google in particular. Last I checked MSN uses the content towards searches.

The Description tag is basically what people will see in the search results if Google does not decide to override what is listed there. They can be useful for your most important pages... it is certainly not worth rushing out to fill in each and every one of your tags...

Re : Meta tags info

All good information here
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