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I need your feedback on picking between two different approaches in writing more effective META tags.
One approach is based on analyzing the current logs and traffic trends of visitors, and trying to capitalize on keywords that THEY find you under.
The other approach is to write Meta tags based on keywords YOU want people to find you under, and trying to shift their current traffic behavior from what you consider as wrong keywords to new keywords that are better for your site.
So my question is:
If your site sells different Fruits, and from analyzing your logs, people are finding you more through typing “Apples” in Google, but you want to be more visible under “Orange”.
Which Meta tag keywords are more appropriate to the site in your opinion?
1- “Fruits, Apples, Red delicious… etc” or
2- “Fruits, Oranges, Citrus, vitamin C… etc”?
Regards
Mo
If you are not happy with your results, then by all means change the meta-keywords. It might take a while to see any changes in your logs.
One thing to consider is how to get more traffic without losing what you are currently getting with your keywords. If both apples and oranges were already in the keywords, I don’t believe that rearranging will make much difference.
Given the theory that keywords are not as important as they were, I would look at first changing my meta description, the info in my <h1> tag and the anchor text of links close to the top of the page.
I believe that you will find that your original assumptions are closer to what you need than you think, so make little changes and see what happens.
jb
I guess i wasn't as clear as i thought i was, so let me re-phrase the question,
Which approach do you think is more effective when re-writing your Meta tags after several months of logs?
1- Focusing on new shades and variations of the same words visitors already find you under? through actual logs?
2- or Focusing more on new words YOU want them to find you under? even if they never existed in your logs?
Thanks again for your help.
Mo
Ps: by the way i am a professional web designer and eBusiness marketer and not a fruit store owner :-) i was just giving an example.
BTW, you can use synonyms in keywords because It seems google has noticed some synonyms on my page and I am getting traffic from search to a synonym rather to a real term in one of my pages.
Luck!
However, watching your logs for keywords that are already finding you and then tweaking your content to gain better ranking on those searches -- that's a very valuable practice. You can even consider creating entirely new pages basd on what you discover in your logs.
I have several clients who have learned about completely new market segments this way and even changed their off-line marketing as a result.
You're definitely on to something here, but take it beyond the meta tag.
After a site is up and running for a while, I value the information in my logs much more highly than anything else. Not Overture's Tool, not Wordtracker -- nothing beats the real world evidence.
I am getting traffic from search to a synonym rather to a real term in one of my pages
There are at least two ways that this can happen without Google using your meta keywords. One is off-page. Someone may be linking to your page from a page that uses the synonym in or near the anchor tag (or even in the page Title).
A second is that Google recently introdced a new kind of "synonym" search. If you place a tilde [~] in front of a word, Google will include common synonyms in the search results. This has been talked about on these forums, and following that, has been written up in several newsletters. So people are bound to be experimenting with this new search tool - and bringing you synmnym traffic from time to time.
