Search Engines & Meta Tags Keywords

[andyT]

Search Engines are so important for our businesses, I have read somewhere that it is not necessary to put commas between keywords,

"Adding commas only lessens your chance of matching a specific search phrase. Additionally, since spiders will only read about 200 characters of text for Keywords, every comma you add takes up what might be valuable space"

What is your opinion/experience ?

Regards

[Mike Hughes]

There was a time when the keywords meta tag was important but those days have long gone. Inktomi was the last search engine to really use them and since Yahoo took it over the importance has dropped there as well.

The reason to use commas was to separate the keywords and prevent being viewed as spamming. i.e. "blue widgets, widgets, widgets for golf" ran into danger of the SE seeing widgets three times in a row and marking the page as spam.

I doubt if that would happen these days, but my advice would be to still use commas and still avoid the same keyword appearing more than twice in a row (even if separated by commas). It probably won't make any difference but it's not worth taking the chance.

I'd also ignore the 200 character bit. That sounds to me like a hangover from the early days of search engines and them only looking at the first 200 characters of content. Irrelevant now.

Mike

[andyT]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your response, I value your opinion.

I understand that the keywords are less important than they used to be but understand that they still contribute to the ranking of a website together with the page Title, Page text and whether text appears bold or not etc.

I didn't realise that the 200 character limit doesn't apply now.

I'm not sure that commas are needed to split up the key words into search phrases.

Does anybody recommend a particularly useful reference website on search engines that mentions the use of commas between key words ?

Regards

[OldWelshGuy]

HI Andy,

It is personal choice, with regard commas, no commas, the search engines are clever enough now to work out what is what. Google totally ignores the keyword meta. Before anyone jumps on this statement I have a long time test page up that is completely blank, the only text appearing anywhere being a made up word that does not appear anywhere on the internet. The page is spidered regularly by the spiders, and google has a cache of it. The page oes Not show up on google for the made up word, this proves absolutely that currently Google is ignoring the keyword META content.

Yahoo! uses both the keyword and the description metas, as Y! leans toward more traditional on page SEO (search engine optimisation) good title, keyword, description, and as importantly, content. Google on the other hand leans more toward link populrity and anchor text of links.

OWG

[andyT]

Hi James,

Thanks for your reply, You've shed a little more light on shadowy world of SEO,

Thanks

Andrew

[OldWelshGuy]

No problem, and only the shady web marketers keep stuff in the shade lol. I enjoy helping out on forums. And as actinic is getting more and more popular, and is search engine friendly out of the box, it makes sense to come here. I can learn all about the workings and mindset of Actinic, and help out with the SEO aspect at the same time :-)

[newshopbloke]

Hi all,

Glad ive found this thread because its time for me to start improving my ranking.

I would like to add meta descriptions, keywords and anchor text to my Actinic store and was wondering if someone could tell me if im doing things right :

The same meta description on every page - short description about the website in general ?

Meta keywords on every page - keywords about the page itself seperated by commas and no spaces ?

Anchor text on every page - but linking to what ? othe pages or the same page ?

I know keywords are supposed to be finished but I still want to use them.

Any help would be great,

Cheers

Mick

p.s. I have been using adwords with good results but now suspect foul play as my daily clicks are getting used up very quickly with no click through or site viewing at all

[thomas]

your website

mick

Are you reffering to your site in your profile www.artscraft.co.uk?

[newshopbloke]

Yes Thomas,

Im not listed anywhere on google other than my adwords or complete url search.

Cheers

Mick

[thomas]

not listed on google

Mick

Depends how long your site has been up and running but there are a few things you can do easily to help yourself, your page titles are very important to Google and links too and from your site are as well. I would try and pick OWG brains if I where you he is a moderator on the www.highranking.com forum and knows his stuff, take sometime to look at the different forums for SEO (search engine optimization) as these can help with your search engine listings.

And when you post on a forum of any kind try and put you details on your signature as these can crop as links to your site.

Good luck!

www.wazoola.co.uk Baby and Christening gifts.

[OldWelshGuy]

Hi Mick,

The site looks nice, but have a look at this
------------->snip
[eraser.gif]
[catalog.gif]


[metal.jpg]
[body.gif]
Home
More Pages
Products
[body.gif]
Artscraft

Artscraft Intro


[shim.gif]
[squiggle2.gif]
------------------------>snip

That is what Google can see when it views the index page of your site. Now Google works out what a page is all about, and what relationships are between pages by using one thing. Text.

Your page has no text at all on it, so Google is going to have a hard job working out what your site is about. All of the search engines use algorithms to work out what is what on a page, and to work out the relationship between pages.

E.G. page 'a' has a lot of text on it about art and craft and design. It links to page 'b' that also has a lot of information on it about crafts. The 'text' in the links is 'Needle point Crafts' Google can work out that a page about a subject, is linking to another page about another subject, and the text in the link is relevant to both the anchor page (the page that is linking from, and the target page (the page that is being lnked to) this text acts as a bridge, and is known as 'anchor text', it is VERY important.

I will answer your questions now

<The same meta description on every page - short description about the website in general ?>
Search engine Algorithms don't rank sites exactly, they rank individual pages and their relationship to other pages on th same domain and others. Each page is judged on its own merit, (on page factors) and also by what other pages think of it (off page factors or links & anchor text). Your page title should be relevant to the content on that page. The description in the meta should be the description about that page, it, like your title must ontain your keywords that you are optimising that page for. Yahoo and MSN rely on the meta description, and it will also be displayed on a lot of search engines (SE's) when your site is returned.

<Meta keywords on every page - keywords about the page itself seperated by commas and no spaces ?>
Again the meta is unigue to every page, but this is the thing, only include the keywords that appear on the page as text. The meta keyword tag is meant to tell the SE algo what the 'main' keywords are. Now if they are in there, but are not on your page, then it is apparent that you are in fact cheating (spamming) the se algo. So be sure to tie up description, & keyword metas to page content. And it makes no odds if you comma or not, but it is easier to read if you do. Don't repeat words though, or you can run into trouble.

<Anchor text on every page - but linking to what ? othe pages or the same page ?>
I explained anchor text above, it is VERY important, and as for internal or external links, BOTH! Page rank flows easier within a domain than it does across the web. Your navigation structure is a major part of the Search engine optimisation (SEO) process. Keyword rich anchor text on your internal links, and external links, together with the keywords in your title tag are going to do more than almost anything in your quest for high rankings in the SERPs (search engine results pages)

In the old days, when there were no graphics (apart from ASCII x or line images) we told people what they could expect to find if they clicked on a link by highlighting it in blue to show them there was a link, and choosing the words that best described what to expect if they click through. NOTHING has changed, If you have a page about 'Acrylic paints' then using the anchor of 'acrylic paint' tells the user and the se algo what the target page is all about. using the anchor 'acrylics' does not. Choosing and designing and laying out your site is what quality SEO and web marketing is all about.

Design your site so that you have specfic pages about specific information. Layout your navigation so that the people looking can find what they want easily, via buttons and text. Design a site map and link to it from every page on your site. Link to the home page from every page on your site. Doing this will ensure that your visitors will be able to find EXACTLY what they are looking for on your site, and be able to move around your site with ease. Funny thing though, so will the search engine spiders

<I know keywords are supposed to be finished but I still want to use them.> Don't get confused with 'keywords' and the keyword meta. People searh for words, and you optimise for words.


Hope this helps

OWG

[newshopbloke]

Thanks owg,

Its now clear that I do not have enough anchor text
I originally removed all the standard actinic navigation at the top of each page because it looked messy and in my opinion confusing to the user.

My url is not 'cached' by google and maybe thats because my index page has just 4 links and a gif with no text.

Lots to do and lots to learn,

Cheers

Mick

[JRAS]

New Member Posting

I have just joined the forum, and have been reading the posts, many of which have caused a chuckle and brightened the day.I have been using actinic catalog for a couple of years now and I have upgraded to V7 which was not without problems with missing files etc.
I am about to begin overhauling/streamling the site and optimising for search engines. I already use google adwords but over the past few months have found our site dropping from the top ten to insignificance, so something is amiss which I am unaware of.
To help optimisation I am using the new page titles element available in V7, (section details/layout/Page name box, and constructing a new links page in the brochure pages to begin building conections to other/like sites.
Some of the site will have the sections compressed to allow easier transition between pages.
Please feel free to view the site in its current form (complete with some ongoing upgrade problems) and offer any help/comments you feel may help.
I intend to manually submit to the major engines as I am told that search engines recognise most of the automatic site submission software as spam and throw them out.
JRAS
www.centgalleryandnavajo.co.uk

[thomas]

Search engines

I intend to manually submit to the major engines as I am told that search engines recognise most of the automatic site submission software as spam and throw them out.
JRAS
www.centgalleryandnavajo.co.uk

You do not need to manually submit to search engines get some links form people and forums such as this, having your site in your signature helps.

I read somewhere that Google had put a submit your site here button to stop the thousands of emails they had been getting saying how do we submit to Google.

I have also PM you about a possible sales outlet!