META Tags & Google rankings
Does anyone use META tags on their website?
There's information all over the Internet suggesting that Google ignores them.
So when I set up the CSSCGC 2008 website, I didn't bother with them.
When typing "CSSCGC 2008" into Google, the CSSCGC 2008 site remained steadfastly on the tenth page of results for three months.
So, a couple of weeks back I thought "I'll just stick some META tags in anyway".
Two days later, the website went right up to the fourth page of results. Now it's on the third page, but not only that, the Google results page is showing the contents of the description META tag, rather than the page content as it was previously.
I'm not too bothered about this ranking, as the first hit goes to the CSSCGC 2008 forum anyway.
But, clearly META tags do affect Google rankings, and the Google search engine does read them. So I wonder why there's so many people on the Internet saying that Google ignores them?
There's information all over the Internet suggesting that Google ignores them.
So when I set up the CSSCGC 2008 website, I didn't bother with them.
When typing "CSSCGC 2008" into Google, the CSSCGC 2008 site remained steadfastly on the tenth page of results for three months.
So, a couple of weeks back I thought "I'll just stick some META tags in anyway".
Two days later, the website went right up to the fourth page of results. Now it's on the third page, but not only that, the Google results page is showing the contents of the description META tag, rather than the page content as it was previously.
I'm not too bothered about this ranking, as the first hit goes to the CSSCGC 2008 forum anyway.
But, clearly META tags do affect Google rankings, and the Google search engine does read them. So I wonder why there's so many people on the Internet saying that Google ignores them?
Post edited by Digital Prawn on
Comments
Google prefers things like links from high ranking websites, linking to your site to sort validate you. Also they use things like page title text to catch 'META data' to stop people embedding META data in the page but putting it near the bottom and in a dark font on a dark background.
Well, some anyway. Well one really... and the title tag. And the jury is much divided on the keyword tag so it's worth filling in anyway.
<title></title>
<meta name="description" content="">
These two directly affect how your listing appears in the serps as well as contributing to the keyword weighting.
You should also fill in the keyword tag:
<meta name="keywords" content="">
But google is supposed to be more interested in the keywords in the rest of the content of your page.
Also google likes to fing the keywords in the link text of links pointing at your site.
Make sure you at least use the <h1></h1> tag on your page.
In all cases don't put too much crap in them and put the important ketword/phrase at the beginning of the tag.
Keyword density in the conent sould be about 5% and Google wants to see a fair bit of content.
Erm and separate pages for each keyword as well.
And a google site map, but I find that google ignores it's own sitemaps.
It seems like a bit of a dark art really!
These mysterious google crawlers work in ways which don't seem to be made public.
No wonder there's so much misinformation and supposition out there about how the rankings operate.
Most info seems to be from empirical evidence.
Thanks for the tips, I may try to optimise the site a bit further in line with what you mentioned dekh, but not just the CSSCGC 2008 site, I have some other stuff too.
Cheers, DP
My site does not use Meta tags as I threw it together in an afternoon purely as a proof of concept.
Mind you it's name is very unique.
AS the CSSCGC is yearly and has more than one host, and a load of followers, there is plenty on the web to throw google off the scent.
If you type in a pretty match bang on name for a site then it will come up. The tricky bit is to get words like retro, computing, 8-bit to refer to your site. This is more likely what people would type if they weren't looking for your site directly.
It is a black art and one that Google keeps under it's chin.
Right there, and Google keeps changing the rules.
TBH I would say that if you create a good site which people are interested in then it will achieve naturally.
Google's Page Ranking is totally bizarre. I'm busy creating a site for a dress designer. The site is live in that it can be viewed on the net under the correct URL and it has a fair few dresses and bodices on it. But, it's got no sites linking to it - link: gives nada. It's never been submitted to google or anywhere else. It has somehow managed a PR of 3.
Another site for a panel solictor who decided to offer their services as cheap conveyancing has been live for over 2 years, published, linked to, has plenty of content and a PR of 2.
Can't fathom it at all, unless the google spider prefers pretty women over cheap remortgage conveyancing services. Or Google deliberately marks down sites paying to advertise on google ads, but that would destroy the integrity of the SERPs.
Mind, both of those I could understand.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
Thanks, I did cut a few corners when setting the website up.
I have now put this in the main page. I'll have to add it to the other pages as I update them.
Adding the above at least allowed the page to be validated. It initially gave eleven errors. I've now got it down to five, but three of them are in third party code embedded in the site.
But I can see now that it is important to have this DOCTYPE element present in any event.