jampers
09-01-2004, 07:29 AM
As I reported in the padded room. My site
http://www.irishpropertymoves.ie
slipped badly down the google rankings from 31 to 96.
I had replaced an image map with a plain image and worked what I thought to improve the metas.
I noticed that the keywords and description meta tags were not being read so I amended them.
The site then jumped up 50 places.
I also noticed that the number of links link://www..had increased from 5 to 18 although there had been 5 when it was ranked no.31.
Jampers
seobook
09-01-2004, 08:42 AM
for most sites you really want to try to get links from at least a few dozen sites to help stablize your rankings
the changes you are seeing in Google likely have little to do with meta tags
Daria_Goetsch
09-01-2004, 01:07 PM
I agree with seobook, work on building your backlinks. Look for directories and paid directories you can submit to.
jampers
09-01-2004, 06:13 PM
Thanks lads,
I wonder is there are different types of crawls. For months only 5 links showed up in a link:www search then 18, but when I do a search for my domain name up comes 500. It must take time for them to filter through.
All I know was when I amended the meta and replaced the image map I had risen 50 places. i initially thought it must be the metas or the image map despite what all I'd learnt in SEW but then I discovered the links.
dunno
Jampers
mcanerin
09-01-2004, 06:56 PM
Sometimes, when people talk about "metas" they actually mean header information, which includes metatags, but also includes things like doctype, language, and most importantly for SEO purposes, title.
It IS possible to go up in rankings substantially in non-competitive searches just by changing your title tag, but that's the only way I could see a change in header information having a significant effect on rankings.
I firmly believe you should have properly designed header information, just like you should have properly designed HTML and document structure. It all helps a bit for SEO purposes, but is in no way a controlling factor except in a few very specific areas.
Typically, having well designed header information will only help you at the extremes - in totally non-competitive areas where you have almost no competition and the sliver of relevance you get from the metas helps (note Google appears to totally ignore the keywords metatag - so you don't even get any help there).
It can also be the difference at the ultra high end, where sites are professionally SEO'd and every site has tons of links - in this case it's like shaving off a 1/100 of a second in a race - most of the time it won't matter at all, but it can be the difference between two sites. I'd rather count on links, myself. Hoping your competition will have lousy header information when you don't isn't the best plan for ranking I've ever heard of ;)
It's most likely your links - a distant second possibility would be if you changed the <title> tag. I strongly doubt it's actually metatags per se. It's good to have well designed header information, though.
Um, that reminds me - the vast majority of so-called "metas" are totally useless, and some are actually harmful.
This is pretty much all you need for header information, IMO:
Required elements are in BOLD. Everything else is optional (Though for SEO I strongly recommend you use the keyword and description metatags :D )
<!doctype html public …..">
<html lang="…">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" ……">
<title>….</title>
<base href="http://.....">
<meta name="description" content="…">
<meta name="keywords" content="……">
<meta name="copyright" content="……">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://…..">
<link rel="shortcut icon" href=http://..../favicon.ico>
<script type="text/javascript"......</script>
Cheers,
Ian