Hello, I was running one of those really generic meta tester tools. Actually I ran a bunch of them online. Each one was pretty consistently saying that my keyword meta description and keywords sucked relevant to the content on my site. I'm not exactly sure how it makes that determination and tend to disagree. What am I missing here? The site is http://hostdrive.com Anyone have any suggestions? PR, indexing, and rank is not a HUGE problem. The sites been around for a LONG time, and has done very well over the years. I'd appreciate any pointers that might help explain what I am doing wrong. Thanks.
The meta keyword tag is meaningless for seo purposes today, so don't fuss over it. You are probably getting a bad score with those tools because you have no content on the page. Work on adding some text to the homepage. Look at your analytics and see if you can target some good keywords. I'd shift all the hosting plan graphics above the fold, move those top banners to the footer, which would leave room for text above/below the hosting plans.
Thanks.. I was under the impression that the alt tags and links should be counted at content as well. Its kinda hard to put content on a site like this that is so visually dependent. People like pictures, and our research over the years has shown these simple basic images tend to work and sell product. I did have content in the past, but it was really nothing more than text that was kinda redundant in terms of the imagery. I'll try to see if there is something I can do to work in some content on the page. Thanks again!
I am under the impression that Google is the only one that doesn't give the meta keyword tag too much weight. The other search engines do. Course, I doubt if anyone really knows for sure except google. I am one of those that cover all bases so I also pay attention to the meta keyword tag. One thing I have found is that it is better to just use a few keywords in the tag, and make sure you use them several times on the page. Obviously, your main keyword should be in a H1 tag. I also make use of the H2 tag for the other keywords. Listing a hundred keywords in that tag will probably do more harm then good. Yeah, what I do is old school, and maybe a waste of time, but it certainly can't hurt anything) Good luck
I was kinda thinking that as well. That said, I think its still an important tag. That is what I have been doing, ie., using just a few. I used have almost 100 at one point... Of course this site dates back to the mid to late 90's and little had been changed in the meta area, though the site had several transformation and updates over the years. Why is that exactly? Seems that is now the case... Back in the day (when the site was first created) it was likely the opposite. The old school stuff, IMO is what works best. Its still valid, and once people realize that pleasing Google should not be the main objective, they tend to see results!!!
Jeremy - The H1 tag is normally the title of your page. By title, I am not referring to the meta title, although, it always is in my case) And you should have only ONE h1 tag on any page. When you don't put a meta Title tag on your page, Google looks for the H1 tag to help get an idea of what the page is about. I am not sure during what stage this happens. In other words, I don't know if google searches for the h1 tag first and then picks up part of the page content to display. And again, this has been my experience and also the recommendation of people who do SEO for a living. Does anyone really know for sure? Yep, only Google) You can verify the h1 tag thing by searching Google and then look in the results. View the source and look for pages that don't have the title tag. Then see if the contents of the h1 tag is included in the results. I've see that many times, but not 100% of the time. Zeek
ur keywords will grow along with ur content , so its better to have quality content and the keywords related to it
I really do not know for sure myself, and this is the first I've heard of it. I thought the H1 tag was "heading one" or largest headline type text. As for my title tag, I use it in the meta, so I am not sure that the h1 would apply? Well the thing is, with my site and sites like it, they tend to be rather visual/graphic. As a result the content and text, etc., is in the imagery. That said, I've always relied on ALT tags to articulate the content to the SE's. Unfortunately it looks like Google and other SE's, just ignore the shit out of alt tags now-a-days thinking they may be in place to inject content for contents sake, or to manipulate the SERPs. For a legit site like mine the ALT tags are there to explain exactly what the images are about and what the content of the site and or keywords within the site are. Anyway, I've redesigned the front page to include content since the alt tags and metas do not seem to be doing the site any justice. Thanks.
I agree 100% with this. In fact some of Google's different products do use the meta tag but their search engine doesn't. As you say some other search engines do use it. The fact is no one knows and if Google did still use it chances are they wouldn't tell the world. So it's still a good idea to use meta keywords.
You are correct it is the largest heading tag. Do not confuse it with the title tag though. You are certainly missing out on better on page optimisation without using the h1 tag. For example on your dedicated server plans your h1 tag could be "dedicated server plans" while your title tag could be "Cheap US dedicated servers etc" You can style the h1 tag easily using css. It doesn't matter what size the h1 text is, it's big by default. Here is a example h1 { font-size: 12px; color: ff0000; } EDIT: The alt tag is not really used for SEO although search engines may have use for it. It is advised you use the alt tag because: - Visually impaired visitors may be using software that reads the alt text because they cannot see the image - If the image doesn't load or if it's missing then the browser will display the alt text so the visitor has an idea of the image You may have better success using the title="" tag. I believe this is the tag search engines use to read images. Although I may be wrong.