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]

title tag

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]

we're drifting slightly OT but...

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

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.