[ic] Meta Tags

[Frank Reitzenstein]

Jon wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Some of you will recall how I have shared a method for placing the
>> contents of a search page in the meta tags as keywords.
>>
>> In the past these pages have had a ridiculously high google PR compared
>> with the rest of the site. However with the last google  pagerank update
>> we have penalized for these. To see what I mean visit my new site
>> www.theyoungjerk.com
>>
>> Only the categories Protein and Creatine have a page rank. Careful
>> inspection revealed that those were the only two categories with a small
>> list.
>>
>> In all fairness our objective was not spamming, but rather representing
>> what was on the page.
>>
>> Rather than abandoning our technique, I have responded by formatting the
>> lists, so that they are truncated to the officially accepted lengths.
>> Anyone who has downloaded and used these innovations need only download
>> this page:
>>
>> http://www.goldissue.com/images/foundation/toplevel.html
>>
>> (ie the part that goes at the top of the page.html), and open in a linux
>> text editor.
>>
>> If you want to use notepad, I have found that you can save to c: and
>> uses dos edit to open and save once. Then the file will display better
>> in notepad.
>>
>> The only change I have made is to add a perl function which formats the
>> list.
>>
>> Although it has been an embarrassment, and cost a client and my own site
>> some traffic, we have responded by refining the method, and shall inform
>> you of the results in a couple of months.
>>
>> My previous post was this (which needs to be revised once we know where
>> this is heading).
>>
>> http://www.goldissue.com/search-engine-friendly.html
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Frank Reitzenstein
>>
>> --
>> http://www.goldissue.com Ecommerce Consulting
>> _______________________________________________
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>> interchange-users at icdevgroup.org
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>>     
>
>     Frank some may state and/or argue this isn't necessarily appropriate
> topic
> for an IC technical list but I say it is some what because with out traffic
> a site is for not and there are technical approaches that may be unique to
> IC.
> Now with that probably behind us or at least off my chest :)... on to SE
> stuff.
>
>     My primary site has recently moved from PR 4 to PR 6 and I should be
> happy
> but my traffic and sales are down. Point on that don't necessarily mix
> traffic with PR.
>
>     If my memory is correct I recall a post you made some time ago relative
> to meta
> tags (e.g. image alt) and whenever I read something I take at look at my
> site to see what I may
> have over looked and saw my product image alts were not product specific and
> knowing
> IC I could and did make the alts product specific and given the time frame
> and your
> post today I'm wondering if that indeed killed my SE results; perhaps I'm
> being penalized
> a bit. Thoughts anyone ??  In the case of the young jerk site those pages
> with out PR are
> simply not in google's cache hence PR 0 which to me implies they have been
> dropped or
> perhaps google is still cycling through the different server's cache. This
> has been happening
> recently as I saw my site bounce between PR 4 and 6 and now appears to be
> settled at PR6.
>
>     Are you thinking that excessive alt tags have killed your PR and/or SE
> results ? I wouldn't
> mind hearing what you've discovered working with a number of sites sooner
> rather then
> waiting the 2 months for the formal dissertation :)
>
> Jon
>
>
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> interchange-users at icdevgroup.org
> http://www.icdevgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/interchange-users
>
>   
Hello Jon,

I don't have any thoughts on that. Allow me to clarify what I meant:

<title>Allergy Cholesterol Skin Formulas Lip Enhancement Quit</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="description" content="Allergy,Cholesterol,Skin Formulas,Lip
Enhancement,Quit Smoking,Bone & Joint Support,Teeth & Gums,Healthy
Living,Pet Health,Anti-Aging,Detox,Sleep Aids,Beauty Creams,Digestive
Aids,Liver">
<meta name="keywords" content="Allergy,Cholesterol,Skin Formulas,Lip
Enhancement,Quit Smoking,Bone & Joint Support,Teeth & Gums,Healthy
Living,Pet Health,Anti-Aging,Detox,Sleep Aids,Beauty Creams,Digestive
Aids,Liver Support,Respiratory,Stress Formulas,Urinary Function,Brain
Support,Heart Health,PMS/Menopause Support,Sexual Support,Vision
Support,Immune Support,Prostate Support,Body Care,Headache">
<meta name="rating" content="General">
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
<meta NAME="revisit-after" CONTENT="14 days">
<meta name="classification" content="Retail">
<meta NAME="distribution" CONTENT="Global">

These are created automatically from the search list. This is a
sanitized version created by my recent modifications. Previously I was
simply dumping the entire list into all 3  tags in the header (title
description  & keywords). This was after some research, when I probably
quite rightly concluded that google only scooped up how much it wanted
from each tag without penalty.

However further study revealed that this year google started grabbing
the excess from the title, and shoving it into the description. In any
case they appear to have changed something. Therefore I am now careful
to follow the rules as we understand them (each tag is truncated to the
recommended length).

Considering my fanaticism in this regard, I have often been slack
regarding image alt tags, which I assume you are talking about. I am
happy  to discuss this more, except as you say this may not be the
correct forum.

I am interested in your comment to the effect that an increase in PR
resulted in less traffic and sales. This happened at
www.fremantlehealthfoods.com However I believe there is no
contradiction, because what happened is that numerous pages like

http://www.fremantlehealthfoods.com/shop/fremantlehealthfoods/scan/fi=groups/sp=toplevel/st=db/tf=name/co=yes/sf=sel/se=1/op=eq/tf=groups.html

lost their high PR due to what I have described above. The only search
pages which kept their PR had a full list in the title, description and
keywords in the header (without excess). Chris' "about us" page also
lost its PR

http://www.fremantlehealthfoods.com/shop/fremantlehealthfoods/aboutus.html

I just noticed that the meta tags in the header are very incomplete. I
was wondering if in spite of your increased site PR, maybe a lot of
other pages were dropped as in our case?

Certainly I seem to have evidence that in the last PR update, google
have shown preference to those pages which have good content in the
title, description and keywords, and appeared to penalize too much and
too little.

Regards,

Frank.

-- 
http://www.goldissue.com Ecommerce Consulting