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Aaron Hats
02-28-2009, 01:58 PM
For those that have been following my web site rebuilding over the last six months, this is the next chapter.

In my shopping cart there are fields for the meta tag title, description and keywords. Currently, most of the products are set up to use the same info in all three fields. Not great, but it's better than the fields being blank. As an example, the info for the Stetson Temple fedora was:

Title: Stetson Temple Fedora
Description: Stetson Temple Fedora
Keywords: Stetson Temple Fedora

I have just changed that to:

Title: Stetson Temple Fedora at Aaron Hats
Description: The Stetson Temple fedora was the first Indiana Jones licensed hat after the first Indy movie. It is a fur felt fedora with a snap brim and available in many colors.
Keywords: Stetson, Temple, Fedora, stetson temple, indiana jones hat, fur felt, snap brim, hat

I guess my question is primarily with the keywords. A lot of products would have identical keywords. Should I be worried about that? Also, if I put in "stetson, temple" do I also need "stetson temple". Should I put every possible combination possible?

Any other tips and advice would be greatly appreciated before I tackle the 900 products I need to update.

Thanks,

Aaron

nealrm
02-28-2009, 02:06 PM
Don't worry about the keyword meta tag it is completely worthless.

Instead I would spend my time trying to have different titles and descriptions on the pages.

vangogh
02-28-2009, 03:50 PM
Yep. I agree with Neal. Don't worry about your meta keywords. They're pretty much useless.


Not great, but it's better than the fields being blank

Yes, but not much better. Every page on your site should have a unique page title. If you're CMS is using the same title for all pages then every one of your pages is competing with each other in addition to all the other pages on other sites you're competing with. For SEO page titles are probably the most important text you can write on any page. Get your main keyword phrase in the title, preferably closer to the front, and keep your page titles short.

If you want to include branding add your company name to each page. I generally prefer adding the branding at the end though on pages like the home page I may lead with the branding. It depends a little on how well your brand is known. If someone searching for a hat knows Aaron Hats and would sooner click on your page than another site selling hats it might makes sense to lead with your company name.

Meta descriptions aren't really about ranking. What they can do is increase click through on your search results. Google for example will take the snippet below the search result link from one of several sources (your meta description, random text on the page, or the description for your DMOZ or Yahoo directory listing should you have either). I like to think of meta descriptions as a mini ad and try to use the main keyword phrase for the page.

nealrm
02-28-2009, 03:56 PM
I like to think of meta descriptions as a mini ad

I like that description. It fits well.

Aaron Hats
02-28-2009, 05:16 PM
Looks like I may not be in such a bad position after all. Each of my category and product pages do have unique titles. Also, I just searched stetson temple and the search results show the product description that's been there for months. So maybe as long as there's a product description the meta description isn't used.

vangogh
02-28-2009, 05:37 PM
Aaron the snippet you see in the search results can come from the places I mentioned above. Which shows usually depends on the query. With your search it probably made the most sense to show the product description on the page. For another query it could be the meta description.

Search engines will show something there. If you have a meta description you can control what they show to some degree. If you don't they may grab from any part of the page. They won't always grab the same text either. It's dependent on the query and not the page itself.

I just searched using 'stetson temple' and saw this snippet.


The Stetson Temple continues to be one of the best selling Stetson fedoras. This year we added the Sage color to our in-store inventory and think you'll ...

Then I changed the query to 'felt stetson temple' and this is snippet shown for the same page


The Stetson Temple continues to be one of the best selling Stetson fedoras. ... Sovereign Quality fur felt; Brim: 2 5/8" x 2 3/8"; Crown: 4" ...

Not necessarily better or worse. If anything I'd say the second would be more likely to get the click. Just wanted to point out that the snippets are different. They start the same, but they are different and one could be leading to more clicks than the other.

Also the similarity here may in part due to there only being so much text on the page.

billbenson
03-01-2009, 02:06 AM
If I recall correctly, you are using a windows ecommerce site. Does it let you insert different tags for the title, meta description and H1 on a page by page basis. I can think of a number of ways to do it in code so you can easily change the individual tags on a per page basis. That way you can play with it to see what gets the best results for you.

Aaron Hats
03-02-2009, 11:44 AM
Yes, I can manipulate the code on most anything on the site.