Meta Descriptions

[Brian Ellis]

Hmmm. Didn't work. Let's try again.

[Brian Ellis]

Ah, that's got it. Thanks.

[Ed K.]

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,

Hi Kirk - your approach is what is known as "spamming the index", and if it is caught by someone, you could be banned from the index if they want. What you have listed are "keywords", for the meta keywords section, and even in that format, they are spam.

The description tag is important because it puts the synopsis of the page up for many people, and helps differentiate one page from the next. The most index ( and Internet user friendly ) thing to do is to have one title, one description, and one main subject PER PAGE, with all of them in sync with each other. This makes the page more definitive for someone who seeks it, and allows the search engine to know that your page has authoritative content instead of empty keywords luring somebody in. Most good search engines have further analytical routines that reject page contents that are put there as spam. If you keep it simple, remove any page errors, comply with w3.org standards, and simply do what you do, the index engines witll gobble you up and refer people properly. Too many tricks can lead to low rankings or lots of people mistakenly finding your content.

Now, I'm NOT saying that you do not do all the things mentioned in your keywords, and I'm also NOT saying that you are being dishonest or trying to cheat at anything - I'm sure that you actually do all those things. The best approach is to have content, as in text content or articles that cover those issues, and if possible, segregate them by content / topic.

The next thing is to ensure that your menu system can be successfully crawled. If you have flash links or too much javascript, some of your page content might not get indexed. Have a look at searchengine world and others for tools to help see if your site crawls easily.

And most of all, if lots of other authoritative sites refer to your pages, AND, if lots of people visit your pages, don't worry, search engines will direct a lot of people to them.

[Bill_1856]

Brian, I just visited your web site for the first time, and have got to say that the equipment reviews are the best that I've ever read. I didn't know that you'd moved from Tampa. Good luck in your new location. Bill Mitchell (Sarasota)

[Kirk Gittings]

Ed K,

Is what I did not what you are supposed to do with keywords? I.E> keywords related to your profession, location and subject matter in all possible ways that someone might search for informatrion?

[paulr]

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.

This is one of the shortcomings of Google, I think. The system works well for text-based pages, but if you just have a page of images of new mexico architecture, google has no way of knowing. you could have an essay that includes all the buzz words ... but even if you like this idea, google is going to link to the essay and not the images.

so you end up cluttering the page with captions, and doing it with the same marketing motivations that have made the rest of the world so ugly.

[Kirk Gittings]

Exactly Paul. I am not interested in changing the visual or written content of my site just for the sake of a few more hits. I am more interested in quality visits over quantity, which is also why I am not doing a links page. The politics of swapping links just to get hits isn't very attractive to me.

Yet from a business point of view, I want my site to pop up if someone does a search for "architectural photographers new mexico". Maybe there is no way to accomplish this without compromising what I consider the integrity of the sight.

[QT Luong]

The system works well for text-based pages, but if you just have a page of images of new mexico architecture, google has no way of knowing.

Not correct. Google makes good use of the "alt" tag. Many people ommit it, but they shouldn't since it is recommended by the w3c (a web standards consortium). As I said before, good design and good content will lead to good indexing with no needs for tricks that may actually lower your rankings if you don't understand what you are doing.

[robc]

google very recently refused to provide the US govt with a weeks worth of search keys used by google users. In its defence google also stated that it is constantly changing how it indexes sites. Google also states that it uses over 100 critera/algorithms when indexing a site. No one on this list is going to be able to telll you what those 100 criteria are and even if they did, since google is constantly changing the way it indexes, they would only be good until google changed the criteria again. Indexing is not an exact science but there are common sense good practice techniques for improving search engine position.

Note that google rank which is a number from 1 to 10 is not anywhere near as important as search engine position. Rank will help with position but it is easy to find sites with a low rank which are positioned on page 1 of a search phrase.

Also note that there is a huge amount of myth about what google does and does not do.

Search engine optimisation costs. Either in time and effort if you do it yourself or money if you pay someone else to do it for you.

If you are using niche phrases such as "architectural photographers new mexico" then getting page 1 or even position 1 in google is simple. If you want to be position 1 for the word "art" then you have a major battle on your hands.

Search engine position is a game which requires as much constant attention as there are people competing with you on that search phrase. In your case that is 1 so its easy.

Knowing how to do it requires knowledge which comes with experience and practice and as such it costs...

[tim atherton]

google very recently refused to provide the US govt with a weeks worth of search keys used by google users. In its defence google also stated that it is constantly changing how it indexes sites. Google also states that it uses over 100 critera/algorithms when indexing a site. No one on this list is going to be able to telll you what those 100 criteria are and even if they did, since google is constantly changing the way it indexes, they would only be good until google changed the criteria again. ...

well - we used to be able to when our list landlord was director of operations at Google - until they fired him for being too old....

(but I'd wager he still has a pretty good idea of what's needed)