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I have to admit - I was very shy about doing it at first because
I'd never done anything like it before. But desperate times
calls for desperate measures, so I mustered up all my courage
and started stripping. Little did I know just how rewarding it
would be. From top to bottom, I stripped away my description
tags, keyword tags and even some that never seemed to have a
purpose anyways. Hey, what did you think this article was about?
I hadn't really done much with my meta tags in a long time
because I never had a reason to... until I looked around and
suddenly realized I wasn't the only niche in town anymore. It
was only in the past few years that I really had to start wooing
the search engines and actively started building some new
websites. I certainly did not look forward to using ppc
advertising which I had used since the heydays of Goto.com. (For
those who don't know - it's called Overture today) So search
engines were my target, but I needed a plan. I started
researching search results looking for patterns in high
rankings. Wordtracker research was another angle in terms of
finding low-competing keywords and keyphrases. Three sticky-note
pads and two pens later I knew what I had to do. Title Tag &
Filename - Using Wordtracker data, I would title the page based
on a few keywords or keyphrases and then give the filename
either the exact same name, or a shorter version. For example:
If the title tag is "Buy Web Page Templates" , then my filename
would look something like "buy-web-page-templates.html". Sort of
'echoing' the title. Since the meta tags I was creating were to
be used for article and product pages, I wanted to make sure I
got the maximum effect. Keywords Tag - I only use these based on
the type and amount of content on a page. For articles, I don't
use this tag but will put the keywords at the bottom of the
article under "article keywords" like you see in article
directories. For some reason, this works better. On pages where
putting that little keyword rich nugget at the bottom can be a
problem, I usually use it as a blurber like what eBay does. For
example, look at the bottom of this page:
http://antiques.ebay.com/_W0QQfromZR12 Description Tag - Gone.
It's much easier just letting search engines fill in that area
and if the page content changes, then it will naturally change
in the search engines. I've long had the impression that
description tags are something like a sales pitch you give to
search engines, so that if they aren't impressed, they won't
'buy' into the content or pay much attention. After all,
strippers don't make money keeping their clothes on, right? Now
some people will say, "What about the other search engines that
rely on descriptions?" I say... what about them? You mean those
silly little Google wannabes I tried for 5 years to lure to one
perfectly good website only to get 10 hits a month? Yeah, right.
Why don't I just host my website at Geocities while I'm at it
(rolleyes) Title and filename have been the most important to
me. I've finally settled with the conclusion that different
kinds of web pages demand different kinds of meta tags depending
on the type of content, how much content there is, how often
it's updated, and it's significance on the website. I use a few
other tags where appropriate, but I like to keep things simple.
There are many, many meta tags to choose from, yet I still don't
understand how the majority of them have any real benefit for
most webmasters. Most of these tags aren't even used by the
majority of top-ranking sites I've seen. Of course, stripping
tags is nothing new, but when combined with the right
combination of keywords and keyphrases, I believe can work very
well. Imagine my surprise when one of my 'test sites' started
claiming top 5 listings among thousands and often millions of
other websites, with almost daily indexing - but that's really
another story :)
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Accounting for Affiliate Marketers |
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Stripping For Hits |
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