metatags and keywords

optimizing php pages

[catfish63]

There seems to be a lot of controversy around the effectiveness of keyword,description and title tags on php built sites. I understand the pages are delivered as html pages and that php is driving behind the scenes but I'm still not sure how to be effective optimizing the pages. The site I'm working on has a presence for guests as well as a members only area. I don't want scripting that automatically generates keywords, titles or descriptions - I want more control than that. Got any tips - Am I giving you enough information?

[bkeep]

There are a lot of ways to skin a cat. Do you have a single header file for all pages on the site? Do you use a database? Does your site use a default index page and show links like index.php?section=apps?

I am just going to assume you have a single header file that you include with each page. What you could do is place a variable in the header.php or whatever it is called say named $title then in your index.php page before you include the header.php define the $title variable then it will be set for each page individually.

Welcome to WebmasterWorld

[ashishp]

I don't want scripting that automatically generates keywords, titles or descriptions - I want more control than that.

Today your site may have ten members and twenty guests and you will have control and will be able to exercise it too! But when you scale to a hundred members and a thousand guests, you will realise that having the tags automatically generated is the way to go. IMHO for SEO you should not change the title, description often, if at all.

Sample Title:
{membername}'s profile @ Example - The great member site
eg: Ashish's profile @ Example - the great member site

For the description:
{membername} - {membercity},{membercountry} loves {memberinterests}. {sitename} has more details about {membername}
eg: Ashish - City,Country loves sushi, reading & php. Example has more details about Ashish

For the keywords, I do a frequency analysis listing the most used keywords in that text on that page and then order them by count and stick them in the keyword tag. For SEO, the keyword tags is not used much if at all.

hth,

[catfish63]

Thank you. I really appreciate the help. I'm coming in to this project as a marketer to a developing site. My expertise lies in customer experience. I also want to help build best practice standards into the site before launch as it relates to SEO and effective ranking. I don't need to know php as a developer would, but I need to understand enough to ask the right questions. So far, I've been spoiled with good developers delivering what I need - For this project,I want to make sure I'm giving the developer what he needs,complete and in the easiest format for him to integrate.
And that means doing some homework - so thanks again. I hope as this project develops I can avoid some hiccups by learning a little from you -

[ashishp]

Actually, mine is step 1, once you generate unique tags for the page being displayed, you'll need to use bkeep's suggestion to actually display the tags in the page (step 2).