The importance of good meta page descriptions

tosd — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:18:03 +0000

Whether you have a modern CMS such as CMS Made Simple, or and online shop based on Prestashop or Viart, the facility exists for administrators to insert meta information to describe the page to search engines. Here are some good references I have come across to help with this task:

And this is a nice article on writing page titles just to round off the subject. While titles are arguably not as imortant as descriptions they are still relevant:

SEO page title tips

And what about meta keywords?

Well, the truth is that they are no longer very relevant at all. Still, if you would like to use them ensure that you use no more than about 5-6 words. Long lists of keywords are more likely to have your site flagged for spamming.

Using keywords in cPanel’s AWStats to focus your articles.

tosd — Sat, 23 May 2009 05:21:00 +0000

Whether you have a website or blog, writing articles focussed on information people are searching for is the best way to increase your traffic. Sounds easy when you put it like that doesn’t it. But how do you do it and how do you know what people are looking for?

One way is to build on what your site is already becoming known for. i.e. Further develop themes centred around keyword phrases that people are already entering into search engines, and that have already successfully directed some traffic to your site.

A simple way to do this is to check the keyword section of AWStats in cPanel (your hosting account’s administration panel). Scroll down to the bottom and you will see a section “Search Keyphrases (Top 10)” and “Search Keywords (Top 25)”.

If you are a TOSD client and you are unsure how to log in to cPanel contact me and I will be happy to assist.

Using these keywords to provide a focus write as many articles as you like, but try to base each of them on just one keyword phrase. In writing the article include the keyword phrase in each of the following ways:

The article title
Once as a text link (this could be the menu link)
Once in the opening paragraph
As the description or ‘alt’ tag to an image placed in the article
Once in italics or bold
Once in the closing paragraph
If your website allows you to – once in the Meta description
And if you have a blog – include it as a tag.

While this approach will not guarantee a perfectly optimised article. It will significantly improve the chances of the article appearing in search results. And the other nice thing is that once you have done a few it is a simple enough approach to become almost second nature.

The Online Shop Designer Blog » keywords

The importance of good meta page descriptions

Using keywords in cPanel’s AWStats to focus your articles.