I have very basic questions about the best ways to optimize my meta tags...

1. Is it best to include keywords in the "title" like so...
(keywords | title | best | include)

2. Is it best to keep your keywords tag to 3-7 keywords total? seperated by a comma? in all lowercase?

3. Should you keep the "description" meta tag short and sweet? 1-3 sentences?

4. Is it beneficial to add keywords into your header image and what is the best structure for that?

5. What can you tell me about "h1, etc." tags?

6. Would the keywords "questions" and "question" be considered different keywords?

I KNOW THESE ARE DUMB QUESTIONS YOU'VE HEARD A MILLION TIMES OVER AND THAT THE META TAGS ARE NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL NOWADAYS, BUT I JUST WANT TO DO THINGS THE CORRECT WAY.

THANK U

I'm a novice at this, but I'll toss in what I've learned recently.

META tags are not the major part of your ranking. But they do play a role in helping users find your site.

The keywords (really key phrases) should be related to what's on that particular page. Meaning they could change form page to page (and in most cases should).

The description should be short & sweet. Most of all, it should be relevant and contain some useful keywords. By default Google & Live will use the Open Directory description. You may want to look there to see what, if any, is listed for your description. You can force it to use your define META description by using <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP">. this can also change form page to page.

All images should have ALT attributes. All links should have TITLE attributes. Its good for search and accessibility. I have no idea whether it helps with ranking by putting keywords in there.

As far as the title goes, it should be functional. Don't attempt to keyword spam your title tag. It should describe the page using keywords users might use to locate it.

Again, I'm a novice in comparison to some of the members here. Read the articles on SEW. There's lots of good info in them.

1. Is it best to include keywords in the "title" like so...
(keywords | title | best | include)

Include keywords on important parts of a web page
(title, header, anchor texts, etc.)


2. Is it best to keep your keywords tag to 3-7 keywords total? separated by a comma? in all lowercase?

Specific and shorter keywords are better.
spaces or comma can be used to separate KWs but it is more clear when comma is used..


3. Should you keep the "description" meta tag short and sweet? 1-3 sentences?

Make the description direct to the point, short and include the keywords


4. Is it beneficial to add keywords into your header image and what is the best structure for that?


Not sure about this...


5. What can you tell me about "h1, etc." tags?

Just include the keywords there (if KW is necessary to be there..)


6. Would the keywords "questions" and "question" be considered different keywords?

Yes. It has different results


I KNOW THESE ARE DUMB QUESTIONS YOU'VE HEARD A MILLION TIMES OVER AND THAT THE META TAGS ARE NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL NOWADAYS, BUT I JUST WANT TO DO THINGS THE CORRECT WAY.

Some search engines(like MSN) are still looking on these tags...

To add to jhen's post:

2. Uppercase or Lowercase makes no difference.

4. "ALT tags" describe images.

THANK Uyour welcome.

One thing I have to disagree with, and that's about using the title= attribute in all links. That'll only serve to bloat the code (and increase the amount of work), and the title= attribute has not bee seen to have any SEO benefit at all.

Makes no difference at all IMO - only serves as another medium to spam the enignes

One thing I have to disagree with, and that's about using the title= attribute in all links. That'll only serve to bloat the code (and increase the amount of work), and the title= attribute has not bee seen to have any SEO benefit at all.
But doesn't the title attribute help with accessibility? In other words, its not a completely useless option.

Maybe, but the emphasis is on SEO not accessibility

Maybe, but the emphasis is on SEO not accessibility
Yep. But to say that the tag is basically useless isn't correct. ;)

Makes no difference at all IMO - only serves as another medium to spam the enignes

These are not right. Search engine consider title tag the first most important tag and they do look at meta description, but no relevance on meta keywords. (meta keywords are used in some meta engine as far as I know)

Do a Search on Google on for instance, "web hosting" and compare the results to any web pages, you will see google Does list the meta description text in the search result and if you do a search on SEO, you will find most SEO firms has the keyword "SEO" on their web page title.

beside the length of description should keep at no more than 250 characters and 8 words on title tags. the keyword on meta keyword should not repeated more than 3 times.

Deviation

I never said this attribute is useless and I would appreciate if you didn't misquote me either. It may have some added benefit for accessibility but this is an seo forum where people ask about seo questions. For the purposes of SEO it is 100% useless so you can feel free to quote me now if you like. 10 Years and over 300 websites tells me this. What evidence do you have to tell me otherwise? I would love to hear about it.

Proson

Did you actuallt read what I said? I'm really tired of people on this forum misquoting or arguing points that were never raised.

We are talking about the title attribute of a link, not the link title of a document. I am well aware of how important a link title is and thank you for your great post

ok sorry if I misquoted you and in fact you were right I　didn't read the whole thing neither may be I should be next time. Anyway, what do you mean title attribute of a link? you mean the hyper text? or anchored text? They basically should be keyword rich, simple as that. but make sure to change the keyword a bit like a word at the end, in front or in the middle etc. What do you think, I am not 100% for this sense.

Deviation

I never said this attribute is useless and I would appreciate if you didn't misquote me either.
I wasn't misquoting you. That was in response to you saying the emphasis was on SEO. The person, Marcia, above you said it was useless. I was just making the point that it isn't a useless attribute regardless of what the focus is on this forum.

Hopefully you didn't take too much offense to that.:cool:

Anyway, what do you mean title attribute of a link? you mean the hyper text? or anchored text?

title attribute:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#h-12.1.4

The person, Marcia, above you said it was useless. It's useless for SEO benefit.

I was just making the point that it isn't a useless attribute regardless of what the focus is on this forum.The focus is on the question being asked, and the reason for asking it. This thread is about optimization, per the thread title and the first post:

I have very basic questions about the best ways to optimize my meta tags...

1. Is it best to include keywords in the "title" like so...
(keywords | title | best | include)The title attribute of links may have a usability focus, but they can do that without targeting keywords for search engine placement.

Let's clarify:

A) Title element: the page title that appears in the browser and as the title of the listings in the SERPs. Like so:

<title>Page title</title>

Very important for optimizing pages for search engine rankings.

B) Title attribute of links, like so:

<a href="http://www.example.com" title="words here">

Good for accessibility. Bloats the page code. Absolutely no benefit for search engine rankings.

No offence taken. You just look like an idiot thats all. Hope your not too offended by that :cool:

title attribute:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#h-12.1.4

ok thanks for you info. But I don't know if it is good for SEO.
Neither do i know it is good for accessibilities. I was only told anchored texts were good.

ok thanks for you info. But I don't know if it is good for SEO.
Neither do i know it is good for accessibilities. I was only told anchored texts were good.

Originally Posted by BuckfastMonk
Makes no difference at all IMO - only serves as another medium to spam the enignes


Awwwwwwe two peas in a pod! :)

It's useless for SEO benefit.
Good for accessibility. Bloats the page code. Absolutely no benefit for search engine rankings.
Agreed.

No offence taken. You just look like an idiot thats all. Hope your not too offended by that :cool:
:rolleyes: Sure. I look like an idiot for pointing out the fact that title attributes are indeed a worthwhile thing to have. I wasn't even referring you your comment; aside from the relevancy point.

I guess if all you care about is ranking and not creating content that is usable to people with disabilities...

They may not be worth spamming keywords, but they are worth including on your page. If you have a decent system for managing your content, its not that hard to keep them maintained.

ive heard meta's are not important at all.

Here are a couple of observations:

1. The keyword meta is a nice place to put misspellings, and to remember what you were optimizing for, but isn't really important. It is ignored by Google and only used for inclusionary purposes by MSN and Yahoo (ie it goes into the results, but at the bottom). It could actually help in theory if the misspelling was really uncommon and the search engine was not Google, but that's all.

2. The description meta is very important, indirectly. It's not that useful for direct results, but if it has your keywords in it, they are bolded on the results page and that helps draw the eye. Also, the description is used by directories to describe your site (if you write it well) and at that point can be very important to drive traffic and for the directories search function. Finally, the description can make someone choose to click on your result when they may not ordinarily do so due to it's position, if it's written well.

Ian

ive heard meta's are not important at all.


I think you heard incorrectly, Meta Decrp is the first customer/prospect facing messaging that appears within the SERPS.

1. proves relevancy
2. allows you to bold keywords
3. promotes your customer facing messaging....