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A couple of things, I recently had a site appear above (on Google) one of the sites that I optimize and when I took a look at its source code I came across something I'd not seen before:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="description" content="Descriptor sentence.">
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2">
When I reviewed the rest of the source code I found no reference describing what the Descriptor sentence was or what either keyword1 or keyword2 related to.
In any event the site has jumped in to the rankings at a decent level so the tactic seems to be effective. Anybody seen anything like that before?
Also the search feature for the webmasterworld site that is described. Is the idea to create a web page with the code shown and run that to search the site?
Many thanks in advance.
David Olly
Eliz.
A couple of things, I recently had a site appear above (on Google) one of the sites that I optimize and when I took a look at its source code I came across something I'd not seen before:<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="description" content="Descriptor sentence.">
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2">
It looks like someone is using a template and forgot to populate those two pieces of metadata, the description and keywords tags. The first one is a common charset tag that you'll see on web pages developed by those who understand the importance of having that tag.
This is a the reason why my template pages always have empty attributes for those two tags. You never know when you are going to overlook filling those in.
<meta name="description" content="">
<meta name="keywords" content="">
What about the title tag?
What about the inbound links from other websites?
Check there and let us know.
It's my understanding (though I could be wrong) that search engines don't pay much attention to the META tags any more.
That may be true of the keywords, but the description is more important than it ever was. Google often show the description as the text in a search results page. Using it well can make your listing more attractive to potential visitors.
Thanks very much for your feedback.
I recently had a site appear above [one of mine]....
I took a look at its source code I came across [meta tags]....
...the site has jumped in to the rankings at a decent level so the tactic seems to be effective.
...search engines don't pay much attention to the META tags any more.
...the description is more important than it ever was.
abbeyvet: In the context of having an intelligent description of your page once that page is listed, yes, you are correct. But the original poster seemed to be asking the question within the context of getting the page listed, or listed well, in the first place.
Eliz.
<meta name="description" content="Descriptor sentence.">
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2">They state that the page contains the above metadata exactly as you see it with the words "Descriptor sentence." in the content of the meta description and "keyword1, keyword2" in the content of the meta keywords.
So, we have a page where someone forgot to replace the words that resided in the template for that page. And, since the keywords in question do not appear in either of those two pieces of metadata, then we can ascertain that the metadata is not part of the equation for that page.
I'd be willing to bet that if they put in a meta description using the primary keyword phrase, that they would probably jump a position or two. Just an educated guess based on experience. ;)
So, we have a page where someone forgot to replace the words that resided in the template for that page.
I just took that to mean that the original poster had "anonymized" the content of the tags in his competitor's page. I could be wrong, of course.
olly1363: Could you please kindly clarify the above point?
Thank you.
Eliz.
olly1363: Could you please kindly clarify the above point?
Please do as I think I've confused myself too! After reading this again, I'm going to assume that olly1363 used the term "Descriptor sentence." as an example so as not to violate the board TOS about posting specifics. If that is the case, please disregard my comments.
I wouldn't have thought that I was violating any proprietory rights by reproducing such generic terms as "keyword1". My apologies in advance if I'm wrong on that.
Thanks for everyones responses on this.
As it turns out, though, your competitor never actually filled in the META tags, having left the content as the "please fill in this space" filler that the template he's using apparently created.
Since "keyword1" isn't relevant to anything (since it isn't actually a keyword), and the "description" doesn't actually describe anything, I would rather doubt that these have anything to do with your competitor's ranking.
That said, it probably wouldn't hurt if you used these same META tags on your own site. You'd just use them intelligently, filling in the "keywords" with actual keywords, like "widgets widgeting weekend-widget trips" and so forth, and the "description" with an actual description, such as "Our weekend-widget trips get you out in the wet and wooly wild with a group of friends for a great widgety time!"
But my understanding is that these META tags generally only improve the look of your listing once you're already listed. I don't know that they help you get the listing in the first place.
Eliz.
