Improve Meta tags (SEO)
Google hides pages which have the same meta description - you need to click on the "show all results" link to see them.
For google it is better to have NO description tag at all rather than the same one on everypage.
Google does read meta tags, but does not use them for rankings, just information that is displayed.
My suggestion is that we vary the description, using the title and also the Introduction or even a snippet of the page content (possibly user configurable) to generate individual descriptions per page. I don'y know which combinations would be best.
Also a similar approach to keywords should be taken - these should vary by page, possibly use categories/tags as additional keywords, maybe parse the title.
Meta tags should only contain words that appear in the content, IMHO, we should not allow sitewide configuration of meta, it should be automatically generated from sitename, tags, title and content and then only allow users to add their own specific keywords and/or description.
:)
For google it is better to have NO description tag at all rather than the same one on everypage.
Google does read meta tags, but does not use them for rankings, just information that is displayed.
My suggestion is that we vary the description, using the title and also the Introduction or even a snippet of the page content (possibly user configurable) to generate individual descriptions per page. I don'y know which combinations would be best.
Also a similar approach to keywords should be taken - these should vary by page, possibly use categories/tags as additional keywords, maybe parse the title.
Meta tags should only contain words that appear in the content, IMHO, we should not allow sitewide configuration of meta, it should be automatically generated from sitename, tags, title and content and then only allow users to add their own specific keywords and/or description.
:)
Bernard from nearby-an-airport Associate, 6796 posts |
Nick, as you know YACS has a configuration panel to set meta tags. Is your recommendation to use these at some pages only? The front page and the site map would be good candidates. For other locations, we could use meta information attached specifically to individual pages, if any. Would this be a better approach? |
NickR from West Yorkshire, UK 337 posts |
The meta should be for a specific page, so the sitemap and homepage should be different. The current settings would be good for the frontpage and we could use as a base for all other pages. I think we could be clever and generate the sitemap page automatically as the description would be something along the lines of "sitemap for ----- Nick |
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Posted by NickR on Oct. 19 2007, commented by NickR on Oct. 20 2007, (popular)
