Topic: Meta Tags

Ok now this really must fall under "stupid basic html"....

I've never paid too much attention to meta tags in the past but since getting this "official" gig, I need to ensure I do it correctly so they get decent search engine placement.

I've googled a bunch of resources and read many pages that have meta - tips, but wanted to get the expert opinion of some of you here. Do you have common practices? Are there formulas that should be followed? Best resources for reading? etc.

thanks!

It's my understanding that metatags , while useful, are of less importance than sensibly semantic markup and quality content on the page.

451bereastreet.com has a good article on search engine optimiztion. While you are there, read *everything* else Roger has written. I love that guy.

Krets edit: Fixed URL.

(Edited by krets on 06-26-2006 18:00)

quote:

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Steve said:

It's my understanding that meta tags , while useful, are of less importance than sensibly semantic markup and quality content on the page.

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This is probably true, but as far as I understand, Radical Rob has to comply to his employees/clients expectations, and I think I have read somewhere in another thread that they are meta tags "freaks".
And if meta tags are not the most important things, I think they still have some role in a well optimised website.

I personally found Google's optimization tips very useful and interesting

Oh - I didn't intend to suggest Rob ignore his new employer's directive! Just offering some info of a general nature (and some ammunition if adding meta tags doesn't suddenly put the site at the top of the search!)

I've experienced google to classify pages with different content (but a lot of identical surrounding markup) and identical meta tags to be copies of the same page. The problem went away once we assigned different meta tags to each page.

Wow I didn't realize there was so much info available. As Kimson pointed out, my employer has mentioned several times the importance of proper meta-tag placement (which I assume was told to her by the current webmaster). After reading several articles I noticed that meta-tags aren't as important as proper content and titleing, etc.

I am just coming to terms that there are a ton of books that I still should read to get myself to where I need to be. I am a basic designer with lots of ideas and I just learn what I need to learn to suit the need....

thanks for the links guys!

So I've been doing more research on SEO and read more then a handfull of google pages, yahoo, etc.
Do any of you do any professional webmaster which includes listings, submissions, etc? I'm just trying to see what else I can do to boost the sites listings and web presence.


I've never really concerned myself with this in the past, but being apart of a marketing dept. it now has become a #1 priority.

semantic pages with keyywords and phrases in your titles, headlines, opening paragraphs, alt tags etc etc. Relevant content and semantic tagging of it is your foundation.

add to that good cross linking internally using sematic link text

a site map that has every page linked is good bot food

after you've built the web site properly you've gotta increase it's rank from there by selling it's relelvance. you sell the relevance of your site to a robot by getting your site linked *to* from other sites. Sheer numbers of links to are good, the more relevant to the subject the better. Better than numbers is relevance and rank/authoritativeness of the "link tos". If you manufacture processors a link to your site by IBM or Dell or Tom's Hardware are worth much more in a ranking algorithm than a link from radrob.com or somesuch.

To drive link toss you need to have the web address on all your collateral materials, you never know who will link you if they have your address. Then you can pursue link relationships within your (or your comapy's) social/professional network. There are also companies out there that will pursue reciprocal linking relationships for you. You can also build secondary sites that link to yours solely for the purpose of increasing your link tos, make sure the sites are as relevant as possible.

Thanks JK.... very usefull info....