Separate page meta tags?

[mike2587]

Hello-

I'm somewhat out of date when it comes to search engine optimization, but for the life of me I can't figure out how one of my competitors is ranked so incredibly high compared to me. I'm listed on page two at the very bottom finally after a few years, but believe i'm lacking some things. Maybe if someone could take a quick glance at my website that would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.amyscandykitchen.com

Also, i'm not sure what the best thing to do is for selling products online. By that, I mean if your selling the same category of products, do you want to mock the same meta tags as you do on the other product pages? Or are you suppose to use others?

Like on my site for example, we have a pecan turtle apple page and a m&m apple page, if my main search tags are 'caramel apples' and 'chocolate apples', can I have all of my products pages contain the main keywords or should I make them completely different? Will it hurt or help my rankings?

Also, same question but about descriptions?

Thanks in advance,

Mike

[Vladimiras]

In your case I'd pay more attention to off-site optimization. Encourage your visitors to link to you, and find some good links yourself. Don't care so much on meta keywords, and write meta description in a way you would like people to read it on a search results page.

And clean up your code, it has too many commented text, it can (or can not) cause you some troubles. Add a site map and change your navigation from image map to normal links. And add descriptive ALT text to your product pictures.
And throw some salt over your shoulder. It should help.