Best "title, h1, meta description" use?

[Tonearm]

On any given page of mine, the title and h1 are an identical 2-5 word phrase, and the meta description is a sentence or two. Is there a different, optimal layout for these 3 tags?

What about more keywords in the title and h1?

Does Google parse the meta description for any purpose other than SERP display?

[tedster]

What you're doing is very common, especially on dynamic sites. I find it helpful to include a bit more detail in the H1 than the title element for most pages.

Google does seem to use the meta description for top-level tagging of some sort. For example, when you study the "supplemental index" - or whatever it has now evolved into, some pages end up in that partition of the totla index if 1) their PR is relatively low and 2) the meta description is missing, too short, or duplicate.

Also, if a URL ends up ranking for a keyword that is not in the meta description, then the snippet Google displays may end up being something else - something that's not under your control as much.

[Tonearm]

Thanks tedster. Sometimes I see sites that do "keyword, keyword, keyword, etc" with many keywords in the title and I wonder if there's anything to that from Google's perspective. Of course there is also the SERP presentation to consider.

[Tonearm]

Is it OK to have the h1 and title tags identical and the meta description very similar? How do overoptimization penalities work in this regard?

Are meta keywords even worth the bytes?

[tedster]

Here's how I see it, in a nutshell: Over-optimization penalties seem to be mostly sensitive to anchor text. Meta descriptions should be longer than the title or H1 elements. H1 and title can be identical with no problem, but I often get better results when they're just similar. Meta abstract is not used by Google as far as I know. Titles that are just run-on lists of keywords look pretty spammy and less likely to get clicked on.

[dailypress]

Meta abstract is not used by Google as far as I know.

It wouldnt hurt to have it right?

[Tonearm]

Thanks tedster. Is meta abstract and meta keywords the same thing?

[AnkitMaheshwari]

From what I had read a Meta Abstract tag is a summary of the description tag which is much shorter than Meta description.

No the abstract is not same as description and neither it would help in rankings