If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Why do I want Meta Tags In the Head
At one time these tags had great significance in search engine placement, (Web 1.0). Since it is now generally believed they are for the most part ignored by the search engines (Google) many have stopped using them all together. You can tell the significance WordPress places on them since there is no internal support for Meta Tags in the Header file.
So Why do I want them and make such a fuss over them?
When I use a search engine and get the results I’m more interested in the text under the keyword than I am the position of the results. I don’t care who is number one in the search result. More often than not, that first result isn’t providing me the information I searched for. Number 1 to me often means these are the guys spending the most amount of money to get placement in the results. Ok they got the placement do they have what I’m looking for? About 90% of the time the answer is NO!
What do I do. I read the text under the search term in the results. Where does this text come from? Well, if you use meta tag descriptions for your post it comes from them. The All in One SEO plugin allows you to write a custom description not based on the first so many characters in the post. This will let you tailor the meta description tag which can lead to more people selecting your site over another. Even though the other site might have higher placement in the ranking. Now you know why I want Meta Tag Descriptions on all my posts and home page.
If you don’t have a meta description, Google will create one for you. It isn’t always the most descriptive for the post or page.
This used to be handled by Tags in the Head which has to have UTW installed. And UTW no longer works. What to do. I’ve installed the All-in-One-SEO Pack It really is an all in one and many of the features I don’t use and wouldn’t recommend using. Some of the features don’t actually work but the ones I was after work just fine.
Here is how I have it configured for the Lab
- Home Page Title Doesn’t work on this site (I don’t need it)
- Home Page Description OK
- Home Keywords OK
- Rewrite Titles, Disabled. If starting an new blog, maybe, but this could really confuse the search engines if you go changing all the title tags on your blog
- Use Categories for META keywords OK, this adds the category to the front of the keyword display in the meta keywords. Since I optimize the category names as keywords this is exactly what I want.
- It is up to you if you want to use noindex for each the following options. I’m testing for a while the noindex Tag Archives But I want the rest of these indexed.
- Autogenerate Descriptions OK this is the meta tag description for each post
Why do I want my Categories, Archives and Tags Indexed?
Aren’t you afraid of duplicate content? NO. Here is part of what I said to Todd Carpenter in a comment on the previous post.
The main reason I like tagging is the indexing of those tags by the search engines.
I know there is a lot of SEO “wisdom” flying around about “duplicate content” and not having your tags indexed. However, like testing photo equipment in the lab, it isn’t a perfect world on the search engines and I’ve often found a post not in the index, while a tag on the post was. End result the post gets found because of the tag. Without those tags being indexed it is as if the post doesn’t exist.
I think there is a lot of old news SEO out there. Maybe in the old days these things were true. I have to believe Google is smart enough to know the difference between tag pages and duplicate content. After all it even returns “tag” in the results.
The same holds true of the Categories or Archives. I’ve found my sites placing high in search engine results for both of these when the actual post was no where to be found.
Does anyone think that all our post and support pages are going to be indexed at the same time. Do you honestly think Google can’t tell the difference between duplicate content on a site and the blog structure of a blog. When I right click on a site and look at the source code where the bots live I see: meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress 2.3″
This is why I want as many different ways to get my content in the index as I can. Google knows. We talk about the Google Dance because they are not on the bleeding edge, THEY ARE THE BLEEDING EDGE. Too much SEO “advise and wisdom” is out of date. Often by the time it is published it is out of date. But this post is about Meta Tags and not solid SEO vr Snake Oil SEO.
That’s it for Meta Tags and Keyword Tags in WordPress 2.3 Or how to spend hours fixing something that wasn’t broken. Still no pictures but I did manage to work in a screen shot which will have to do.
Now it is on to the rest of the “discoveries” of this latest WordPress Upgrade. (Is it possible to Upgrade on a Downslope?)
Post Tags: All in one SEO , Google and Wordpress , Meta Tags , Wordpress Meta Data
Stumble it!
22 responses so far ↓
1 Scoot (23 comments.) // Sep 29, 2007 at 10:00 pm
I upgraded Dave. I don’t know if it was on the “downslope” though. lol. I used to be on WP 2.2.1 which go daddy installed for me via my control panel .. not once, but twice. So when they told me I should reinstall again b/c of issues I was having I decided to do it my self. I was in over my head. But I thought if I wanted to know what was going on under the hood I should try to do it myself. I can’t believe I did it, but it works, it took about 14 hours before I was back up, but it worked. It’s kinda like agony when your site is down, isn’t it?
2 Dave Smith (540 comments.) // Sep 29, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Agony indeed, like having one of the kids sick and you’re the doctor.
3 Boston Condo Blog (3 comments.) // Sep 30, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Thanks for the clean and concise meta-tag description Dave. You’re doing the great real estate community a big favor by being the ginnie pig with the new WP version, and a good samaritan for documenting your results
Thanks!
4 Dave Smith (540 comments.) // Oct 1, 2007 at 6:57 am
You welcome, I think : )
Ginnie pigs often die.
5 Steve Belt (5 comments.) // Oct 1, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Dave, thanks for all of the hard work getting things nailed down with 2.3, and then sharing how you’ve done it. You have me close to upgrading my “lab” blog to 2.3, to see if I can properly implement tags.
6 Barry Cox (7 comments.) // Oct 2, 2007 at 10:11 pm
I need some work on meta tag descriptions. I try and write relevant descriptions that portray the page, but sometimes Google does their own thing anyway.
7 Eric Blackwell (12 comments.) // Oct 3, 2007 at 10:24 am
@Dave-nice write up and much needed for the blogging community that does not munch SEO for breakfast, lunch, dinner and (like Taco Bell) 4th meal as well!
@Barry–Yes, Google will sometimes take what it deems to be a relevant (read KW rich) piece of your text in place of the description.
8 Scoot (23 comments.) // Oct 3, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Dave, I’ve been using godaddy with WordPress, and seem to be having issues that are specific to godaddy. Do you have experience with godaddy or have a better hosting service to recommend?
9 Dave Smith (540 comments.) // Oct 4, 2007 at 9:26 am
I’ve got over 20 blogs running on godaddy and have no issues.
Here is my question. Are you setting up your own databases or are you allowing godaddy to do it.
I would recommend you do it all yourself from inside your own hosting account.
Did you buy a premium hosting account? Have you checked to see if you are running out of server room?
What are the specific issues?
Personally, I really like godaddy, but as I said I configure all my own databases, do my own installs of Wordpress.
10 Scoot (18 comments.) // Oct 4, 2007 at 10:17 am
Yes, I’ve set up my own database and installed WP2.3 because I was having the same issue with a 500 Internal Server Error when I had them install WP through the dashboard. Ive traced it back to wp-cahe plugin which I see is an issue with godaddy, in the WP forums. I have turned off the plugin but am still getting the same results. I don’t know how to check if I’m running out of server room, but I think I have the premium account, which I have only had for less than a month so it shouldn’t be pushing the limit yet I wouldn’t think. I’ll go check out my account and make sure I have the premium acct. My page loads ok but when I refresh I get the error, and then refresh again and it loads ok again. If you have any quick solutions I would love to hear them, but please don’t spend a lot of time on this, I know you’re busy and I don’t want you to use a lot of your time. I will eventually figure it out. Thanks Dave
11 Dave Smith (540 comments.) // Oct 4, 2007 at 10:33 am
Scoot,
I can reproduce the error on the refresh in FF it does alternate, in IE it won’t refresh at all, but if I cursor to the URL address and hit return it will reload.
So it only seems to be triggered through a refresh.
Not familiar with the WP-cache plugin.
Anybody out there have an idea here?
The good news, most of us never hit refresh except on our own sites. At least it is functional.
On checking your space and bandwidth. Log into your account select your hosting package and look in the right hand navigation it will give you the general specs of space and bandwidth. You shouldn’t be running out of space on a premium account. On a basic account you can fill it pretty fast with images if you use them.
12 Scoot (18 comments.) // Oct 4, 2007 at 11:54 am
I can say that I am on the deluxe acct. I don’t know if that is the basic or not. The premium is on a dedicated server right?
13 Ken Smith (18 comments.) // Oct 4, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Dave I have had many discussions about meta tags with SEO’s and most can’t see any value. The point to me is you get a chance to write a small sales pitch as to why someone should click on that search result. Now many times the search engines do choose their own text from the body, but for the little work it requires why not write that short sales pitch?
14 Dave Smith (540 comments.) // Oct 4, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Ken,
As stated in the post, that is the main reason I want them. I find the only time Google rewrites them is if there is a better keyword rich phrase or sentence.
If you write so they opening of the post is keyword rich they usually just use it
15 Dave Smith (540 comments.) // Oct 4, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Scoot,
The lab was down for about an hour, GoDaddy must have had a server issue, all my sites on this server were AWOL. Another reason to split your web presence over several server and hosting accounts.
Deluxe is what I have for all my sites. keep most of them on this hosting account but do have two other Deluxe accounts and two other economy accounts for sites for my kids.
We still need some help for scoot’s refresh issue.
And I don’t need anyone telling him to take a shower and hit F5.
16 Scoot (18 comments.) // Oct 4, 2007 at 3:48 pm
lol
17 Eric Blackwell (42 comments.) // Oct 5, 2007 at 5:24 am
@Scoot–Have you tried to delete the files from the wp-cache plugin or did you just turn the plug in off…often deleting the plugin’s files will cure it.
Best;
Eric
18 Eric Blackwell (42 comments.) // Oct 5, 2007 at 5:30 am
@Dave–Yep. I agree with the quote below. If you do that with a series of posts in a category then your category page gets some pretty good run as well.
Quote–”If you write so they opening of the post is keyword rich they usually just use it”
19 Scoot (18 comments.) // Oct 5, 2007 at 9:07 am
Eric, Yes that is what I had to do. Now everything seems to be working fine. I thought I could just turn it off, but I had to completely delete it. Thank you Eric, and thank you Dave for allowing me to use your space like this. You guys are great. I feel a blog commin’ on.
20 Dave Smith (540 comments.) // Oct 5, 2007 at 9:43 am
Scoot,
Eric is spot on this one. Deactivating should work, but I’ve found deleting the file is the only real way of knowing for sure.
While I like plugins a lot of plugin authors know enough to make things work, but don’t always write good clean code.
And this is why I created the lab in the first place. Glad you found us. Eric is a huge help.
21 Scoot (18 comments.) // Oct 5, 2007 at 11:25 am
Well thank you both!! You inspired me to write a post about this and to refer you both to all that read my humble blog. Post is live now.
22 Las Vegas Guy (4 comments.) // Oct 5, 2007 at 8:54 pm
I have to agree with Ken. Why not invest the time and write a short sales pitch? Give the search engines a choice.
Leave a Comment