Yee-haw! Pages now ranked for keywords!

My site's back to #1 through #12

[dickbaker]

Like many here, I've been watching the nine Google datacenters, and the slow rise of my site's pages go from #500+ to #1 through #12 based on my keywords.

This is where my site was back in mid-May.

There's still a couple of interior pages that haven't been indexed yet, but the others are coming up roses for their respective keywords.

What's really odd is that, since I've changed the meta description tags to match the first couple of sentences of the pages' actual text, Google's description of the page contains both the meta description as well as the opening sentence of the pages' text. In other words, it sounds like Jimmy Two Times from "Goodfellas," who got that name by saying "I'm gonna get the papers. Get the papers."

Not complaining, just observing.

At last, I can tell my client that all is right with the world!

[Marcia]

It sure doesn't sound like a complaint! :)

dickbaker, were there any other changes aside from the change in the meta description? Any change in number of links? And do you think it might have something to do with the increase in the number of site pages indexed?

[dickbaker]

Hi, Marcia. Besides changing the meta tag descriptions, I also gave most of the pages <h1> headers, such as BLUE WIDGETS. I also changed the titles of most of the pages to match my keywords more succinctly. The titles used to contain the name of my client's store plus the product being sold on the page, ie OUR STORE: BLUE WIDGETS. Now the page title is just BLUE WIDGETS.

No change in the number of links on the site, but I have been going around to other sites to create incoming links.

All of these changes are things I learned in my short time here at Webmaster World, so thank you for having these forums.

As far as the number of pages indexed, they were all indexed before May 15th. Now most of them are getting re-indexed.

And you're right: my post is not a complaint. ;)

Thanks,
Dick

[martinibuster]

Sounds like you did a good job of tightening the focus of what the pages were about: Clarification.

Good for you!

[ga_ga]

I'd fallen into a very bad habit of including meta keywords tags, purely for the customer's benefit.. thought (& we all know what thought did) Google just ignored the tag.

I found a number of my pages had been PR0'ed recently, & the one thing they had in common was, a keyword tag, carelessly thrown together, with none of the words or phrases appearing in the page's body text..

Could be a mirage but seems suspicious coincidence all these pages seemed to be penalised at roughly the same time, about a week or so ago?

[Ltribe]

I have pages with meta keywords that don't appear in the body text.

No problems noted.

[tedster]

Same here. Years back AV used to be picky about this, but they used the meta tag in their algo then. I really doubt that this is the factor causing your problem.

[hurlimann]

>At last, I can tell my client that all is right with the world!

If I told my clients this they would no longer be clients! ;)

[trillianjedi]

No problems noted.

I don't think this one is a big deal for google unless you go really overboard with them.

TJ