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journeyoftheanimals · 11-27-2007, 02:23 AM

Hello all.I have been trying to work on new designs and also Search Engine Optimization. Could you please review my <head> tag and let me know what you think? All keywords are under 10,000,000 hits on Google and many are below 3,000,000 hits.

Code:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>journeyoftheanimals.com - pets - cares sheets - forums - funny pictures.</TITLE>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="animal lover, pet reptile, exotic animal, household pet, pet forums, care sheets, funny pets">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Journeyoftheanimals.com where we strive to be your number one source of information for all your household and exotic pets.  We supply forums, care sheets, articles, pictures and much more.">
<META NAME="author" CONTENT="Adam Burgi, journeyoftheanimals.com">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Copyright" CONTENT="Copyright 2006 - 2007 journeyoftheanimals.com. All Rights Reserved ">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="ALL">
</HEAD>

richkid · 11-27-2007, 03:24 AM

In my opinion your are targeting much to broad a keyword. I would focus on some longtail keywords. That may not get as much traffic but have less competition.

Jamieharrop · 11-27-2007, 08:43 AM

For what it's worth, Adam, the 'keywords' meta tag is widely ignored by large search engines. There was once a time when the larger search engine players had their use for it, but these days it is very much ignored and used only by a select few smaller engines. More info at SearchEngineWatch: Death Of A Meta Tag

I gathered I would put that out there just in case you weren't aware.

richkid · 11-27-2007, 10:56 AM

I would focus on targeting your title tags for each page as I find they make a big different in your SERPs

Nick R · 11-27-2007, 02:43 PM

Meta information is still widely used by many search engines for a lot of small sites. If you are starting off meta information is a must. By the way, don't use capital letters while describing elements as it is not XHTML compliant.

Jamieharrop · 11-27-2007, 02:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nick R

Meta information is still widely used by many search engines for a lot of small sites. If you are starting off meta information is a must. By the way, don't use capital letters while describing elements as it is not XHTML compliant.

That's true for the description tag and a few other select meta tags, Nick, but the keywords tag is as good as dead for all but a few small search engines. Still, there is absolutely no harm in using it. I just want to make sure people don't think the keywords tag is the crucial secret to getting good search engine rankings, because frankly, it won't make much of a difference in this day.

journeyoftheanimals · 11-27-2007, 03:05 PM

So if key words are out, what is the way to go now? Is there something that has taken it's place.

Reminds me of last night when I was working with dreamweaver cs3 and was trying to learn more about layers and found out that cs3 uses something called "containers" or something like that. /sigh great now I have to start learning all over again.

Jamieharrop · 11-27-2007, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by journeyoftheanimals

Is there something that has taken it's place.

Not really, Adam. Generally the first paragraph on your homepage will describe what your Web site is about, and this will include your most important key words.

The key to SEO is optimizing your Web site for humans. If you optimize your Web site to provide an informative, useful resource for human visitors, then search engines will enjoy the surfing experience as much as human visitors will and you'll reap the search engine ranking rewards.

Like I said in my previous post, there's no harm in using the keywords tag. It just doesn't have the importance that it once had.

journeyoftheanimals · 11-27-2007, 04:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jamieharrop

Not really, Adam. Generally the first paragraph on your homepage will describe what your Web site is about, and this will include your most important key words.

The key to Search Engine Optimization is optimizing your Web site for humans. If you optimize your Web site to provide an informative, useful resource for human visitors, then search engines will enjoy the surfing experience as much as human visitors will and you'll reap the search engine ranking rewards.

Like I said in my previous post, there's no harm in using the keywords tag. It just doesn't have the importance that it once had.

OK thank you. I will then leave the keywords for now and I had already planed using quite a few of the keywords in the first paragraph anyways since I had read that in one of the SEO books I read.

Nick R · 11-27-2007, 05:49 PM

Oh, if we're talking about meta keywords then that's not quite as useful. If you want to learn a few things about SEO, then buy the book from seoegghead.com and read Matt Cutts' blog - Google/SEO.

pacificalaska · 11-28-2007, 12:14 AM

harrop smart