Meta Descriptions

[Kirk Gittings]

A question to you web gurus out there. Is there any particular tricks to the meta descriptions you put with your site or pages or images that helps generate trafic?

Here is a sample that I put with a commercial page in my site.

architecture, architectural, photography of architecture, architectural photography, buildings, design, new mexico, new mexico architecture, southwest architecture, fine art, black and white, southwest architecture, New Mexico, large format, fine art photography,architectural photography, b&w photography, anasazi, historic architecture, view camera, Chaco Canyon, indian ruins, petroglyphs, landscape photography, 4x5, commercial photography,fine art photography, fine artist, fine art photographer, photographic prints, fine art prints, advertising, advertising stock, kirk gittings, Gittingsphoto.com, black and white images, stock for advertising, Architectural photographer, architectural assignment, churches, Southwest, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Las Cruces, El Paso,

[Ralph Barker]

Adding "nude girls" would substantially increase your traffic, but perhaps not from the people you want.

[Tom Westbrook]

It's my understanding that keywords meta tags aren't used much anymore. See http://searchenginewatch.com/serepor...le.php/2165061

Also for a reference: http://www.i18nguy.com/markup/metatags.html

As an example, Google says: http://www.google.com/support/bin/an...topic=0&type=f

[QT Luong]

Trying to trick google with text that is not user-visible is tricky business. If you want to be found under "new mexico architecture", the best is to just build a page that is relevant to users looking for new mexico architecture, complete with title, headers, and meaningful textual contents.

[Kirk Gittings]

Are meta descriptions of any use these days at all?

[Tom Westbrook]

It might be used by some of the less popular search engines. Google definitely doesn't use it. Yahoo might, but if they do it's not used for the description text in your page listings, which was its original intent, I think. It can't hurt you to have keywords and/or description, but it's probably not going to help you much either, so what you listed above is going to be fine. Like Tuan said, you're probably better off with some kind of an "About" page that contains promotional and advertising material.

One thing I wonder is that now you have your web site attached to every post you ever made here (via your signature), if that influences your ranking in Google. A higher PageRank will help more than a bushel full of keywords will.

[Brian Ellis]

One thing I wonder is that now you have your web site attached to every post you ever made here (via your signature), if that influences your ranking in Google. A higher PageRank will help more than a bushel full of keywords will.

It's discouraging to know there's a whole internet world out there about which one knows nothing. But I wonder if you could explain this statement. How does Kirk have his web site attached to every post he ever made here via his signature? Is my web site also attached to every post I've ever made here like Kirk's or is there something I should do if I want that to happen or something I should do to prevent it from happening if I don't want it to?

[tim atherton]

Kirk has his www.gittingsphoto.com attached as a signature when he posts - just as I have the Fred Astaire quote...

So every time he posts, his website url is there ready to be crawled - but - and I don't think I'm mistaken (?) - it is now also applied retrospectively to all the (1415)posts Kirk has ever made on the LF forum

[Tom Westbrook]

Tim's right, it's only there if you define a signature in your User CP settings. Your signature is stitched on the fly to the end of your posts when they are displayed to someone, regardless of how long ago you made the post. You can change your signature whenever you want and the changes are reflected immediately in your posts, too. Feel free to try it out, you can always delete the signature if you don't want it anymore.

[Brian Ellis]

Thanks, I'll give it a try.