Meta Tags

[TiggyPig]

I keep adding my own meta tags to the HTML of my brochure page and also the Act_Primary but I can never see it when I view the source.

Is it being overwritten and deleted?

[pinbrook]

You can use catalog's facility for meta keyword and description.

I now use a customvar for title, far more flexible

what other meta tags do you want?

[TiggyPig]

This is what I had on the old site:

<title>Gadgets, gizmos and unusual gift ideas from TiggyPig.COM</title>

<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="gadgets and gifts, gifts, cool gift ideas, big boys toys, novelty gifts,toys, games">

<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="gadgets, gifts, boys toys, boystoys, unusual gift idea, corporate gifts, corporate gifts, novelty items, dancing hamsters, ">

<META NAME="distribution" CONTENT="Global">

<META NAME="rating" CONTENT="General">

<META NAME="classification" content="gifts">

<META NAME="COPYRIGHT" CONTENT="2003">

<META NAME="author" CONTENT="TIGGYPIG.COM">

<meta name="language" content="en-uk">

<META NAME="Robots" CONTENT="ALL">

<META NAME="REVISIT-AFTER" CONTENT="28 days">

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">


I think thats correct, any search engine optimisation Guru's please feel free to add or delete.......

[pinbrook]

Personally I only bother with Title, Description and keywords.

Even keywords are debatable since the only engine that possibly reads them is Inktomi.

For SEO the most important factors are Title and body text. This is what most engines now use to analyse the site

[TiggyPig]

well, my ranking has dropped from 5 to 4 now on Google Toolbar....

I wanna try and get it to at least 6

[george]

Jo,

Any chance in explaining customvar bit a bit for us incompotents?

Thanks in advance,

George.

[jxm28788]

You can use catalog's facility for meta keyword and description.

How do you enter the 'Title tag'? As I understand it, this is the one that is displayed in the search results so is quite important!

[Steve Zodiac]

Here is an example using a couple of (any old) meta tags for the brochure pages, shop pages are similar.
Go to 'Design | Options | Brochure' and in the 'Overall Layout' field
click the button 'Edit' and in the template that opens locate the text:-

TITLE>NETQUOTEVAR:PAGETITLE</TITLE>

and change it to:-

<TITLE>CUSTOMVAR:OWNTITLE</TITLE> <!-- NETQUOTEVAR:PAGETITLE -->

then beneath that enter:-

CUSTOMVAR:METAROBOT
CUSTOMVAR:METAREVISIT

Then save and close the file.

Then go to 'Advanced | Custom Properties' and click the + in the top left
hand corner, in the row that appears enter:-

OWNTITLE

in the 'Property' column, then create two more called:-

METAROBOT
METAREVISIT

and click OK to close the box.

Then go to 'Design | Options | Site Defaults' and in the 'Properties'
tables, click on + again, and in the drop down box that appears select
'OWNTITLE' and tick the box 'Use as CUSTOMVAR' (if it is there).
Then in the 'Value' column for that entry put:-

Your page title etc.

Then click + again and select 'METAROBOT' and tick the box 'Use as
CUSTOMVAR' (if it is there).
Then in the 'Value' column for that entry (for example) put:-

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="index,follow">

Then click + again and select 'METAREVISIT' and tick the box 'Use as CUSTOMVAR' (if it is there).
Then in the 'Value' column for that entry put:-

<META NAME="REVISIT-AFTER" CONTENT="2 days">

Then click OK.

Double click on the 'Home' icon and re-tick 'Use as Website Home Page' and click OK.
When you have done that upload the site and all of code specified should appear on the site index page and all brochure pages.

[pinbrook]

In V6 catalog creates the title by concatenating company Name and section name.

<TITLE>
NETQUOTEVAR:PAGETITLE NETQUOTEVAR:PAGEHEADER
</TITLE>

Whilst this provides an acceptable title it could be better.

An easy solution is to reverse the vars

<TITLE>
NETQUOTEVAR:PAGEHEADER NETQUOTEVAR:PAGETITLE
</TITLE>

the benefit of this is to have section names at the beginning of the title tag improving keyword prominance.

if you take this option thats it, catalog will continue to create your titles.

The other way is to create a customvar (Steve has described the mechanics of this.)

The benefits of this is that you can define your own title for every page, and thus increase the keyword presence even more. Each page is thus better optimised for a wider variety of targetted keywords

When you create page titles there are a few things to consider

1 no more than 60 characters.
2 any keyword in the title must be visible on the page (2 to 3 times is best)
3 you can separate keywords with commas or spaces
4 do not repeat words in titles

[pollygordon]

Ranking on Google is not really to do with Meta-tags, but more to do with a linking strategy. If other sites link to you then that is a vote for your site and will count towards your Page Rank.

If you get a link to you from a PR7 site, then they will pass some of their PR to you and increase yours. It would be unlikely to get a PR6 based on Meta Tags and description alone.

The best way to get free links is to submit to the Open Directory Project www.dmoz.org, which means that eventually you would be incuded in Google's directory as Google uses DMOZ data to compile it's directory.

Actinic works well with Google in that the HTML pages it creates have good keyword description.

Hope this helps.

[pinbrook]

Yes that is true, but it is a little more complex than simply page rank, Google uses a plethera of factors before deciding where to index/rank a site.

good bodytext/titles are equally as important as page rank.

Good page rank isn't keyword specific (unless all your inbound links are hyperlinked on your keywords), titles and bodytext are keyword targetted

Take a look at the results page when you search, google highlights all the keywords it found in the title/bodytext in its search results

[george]

Very informative thread if I may say so.

Have done the customvar option (offline). This appears to make all page titles the same (as inserted in the value box), I thought that there would be an option for each individual page? maybe I've missed the option?


Regards Jo's reverse title option. Maybe keeping the original way but including a hyphen between the two? What's the best way to do this, and is it a sensible option?
eg.

Football Heaven Contact Us
Football Heaven - Contact Us
Contact Us Football Heaven
Contact Us - Football Heaven

Opinions valued, thanks.

[pinbrook]

Have done the customvar option (offline). This appears to make all page titles the same (as inserted in the value box), I thought that there would be an option for each individual page? maybe I've missed the option?

go to the section dialog box, properties tab, plus button and add the customvar and unique title for that section

regading the hyphen

it personal choice, I tend to write titles for search engines, not visitors. Therefore I wouldn't bother with the hyphen

[jxm28788]

If other sites link to you then that is a vote for your site and will count towards your Page Rank. If I have another domain, (the one I got free with my ISP) that is currently sat there doing nothing, I guess I could use that to link to my 'real' site and therefore bump up it's link count...?

What would be the best way to do this? To have something like a sales page with a link to my site. Or if I put a 'redirect' on the free site so it automatically linked to my 'real' site when you visited the 'free' site?

Also, I assume that my free site would also have to be registered in google in order for google to know the link is there...?

[pollygordon]

You would need to get a link from an external site and not one of your own as Google might see that as cross-linking.

Also the sites you need to get links from should have a Google Page Rank already, the higher the better - I assume that if you've not used your supplementary domain that it does not have a page rank.

If anyone is wondering what Page Rank is and for loads of useful information on Google, have a look at Webmasterworld (http://www.webmasterworld.com)

Page Rank on a scale of 0 - 10 is displayed when you use the Advanced Google Toolbar, which you can download free from Google.com. It is considered by some as a form of Spyware however as it does report your queries to Google.

So a combination of good titles for your pages, good meta tags, keywords and links to your site from relevant, well ranking outside sites will help you on your way.

[jacy]

I have chosen Steve's option of
CUSTOMVAR:METAROBOT
CUSTOMVAR:METAREVISIT
CUSTOMVAR:OWNTITLE

In my section tittled carrybags-Notebooks I have clicked the drop down arrow in Section properties and have OWNTITLE as the property then entered Notebook Carry Bags,Laptop Carry Bags,
as the value (I'll add more if i'm doing it right) and just wanted to know if this is correct. If the search engine picks this up is that what is going to show as the title?

Also should i add the METAROBOT & METAREVISIT to each Section/Product as well? If so what is the recommended value for each.
Sorry to ask so many questions but i really want to get it right the first time.

Cheers,

Jacy

[pinbrook]

Your title will be "Notebook Carry Bags,Laptop Carry Bags"

technically it would be better "notebooks carry bags laptops" ie no capital letter, no repitition, so you have room to add a nother different keyword


metarevisit

The "revisit after" tag is used as a throttle, never an accelerator. It can limit the time between spider visits to be at least what you say, but in practice it will never encourage a spiderto visit any more frequently.

metarobot

The default for spiders is to INCLUDE and to FOLLOW. Therefore having no tag is telling them to do these things. The only reason to have a tag (under the exclusion standard the tags were designed for) is to exclude the robots from one or both of those default actions.

[jacy]

Excellent,
Thanks for you replies Jo, The help you provide is A1 and I really appreciate it.

Thanks again

Jacy

[pinbrook]

I've just ediited my previous reply...

Glad to help....it is 3.11 am here, I can't sleep.

[harlequin]

im sorry to argue with you jo as your advice is often excellent..

You often say that meta keywords and description do not matter to google.

i beg to differ, if you do a search on 'search engine optimisation', obviously the biggest term most of us s.e.o.'s want to get high up on, you will notice that the first 10 links in google all have meta keywords AND descriptions that start

<meta keywords ="search engine optimisation....>
<meta description ="search engine optimisation....>

it is also true if you search for virtually anything, go to the first 10 results and i bet that 9 of them have whatever you searched for as meta keywords and meta description...

just my tuppenth worth...

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=actinic+search+engine+optimisation , harlequin no1...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=actinic+marketing , harlequin no3....

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=actinic+hosting , harlequin no1...

we use meta tag keywords and description

;)

personally i feel that metatag keywords and description is just good html, judging by the results above, they certainly cant do you any harm....

steve q
harlequin domains
www.harlequindomains.com
0800 0832077

[jacy]

It's lunchtime here on Sunday!! I should be reading the paper but I think I'm addicted to Actinic :D
However being 3AM there and you still responding to questions, with clarity,I think you may be in a little more trouble than I am :p

Cheers,

Jacy

[pinbrook]

Hi Steve

Maybe I am being a little misleading :( .... I stand by my statement that google does not utilise meta keywords and description. I have researched several leading sites today to confirm that thought.

I think where we differ is that I reckon it doesn't matter if they are there or not, there are other factors which also determine placement.

I agree that the 10 ten listing on SEO all include the tags, but that in itself does not mean that they are influencial.

I probably need to make it clear that whilst Google doesn't use them, that isn't a reason to exlude them, since other engines do. but I would also add that other engines use the desciption but not necessarily keywords.

I can offer "street cars dvd" as a search term in Google UK where surf-wax has no 1 position without a keyword metatag.

I have also removed the tags from one of my pages at pinbrook hosting, I will report on my findings

Jo