Meta Tags

You want to put in Meta descriptions!

It helps your search engine CTR because you can make a compelling meta description to give people incentives/calls to action to click on your website.

In addition, if it is keyword-rich, then the bold it turns when people search for that phrase gives people better indication that you are RELEVANT for their query.

Always put in a custom meta description for each page.

What if the products in your niche are so similiar you are almost repeating yourself when writing these? Any great sources of information out there for me to read.

Are you selling the same product on multiple pages?

If not, your pages will have different model numbers, etc.

And you can always have a different call to action/incentive in your meta information.

If you look at your webmaster tools, it will tell you if you have 'duplicate meta' information and if you need to fix it.

(It's under the Optimization > HTML Improvements tab)

Well ---all my products--they are very very similair. Let's say I sold Leggings---there are only so many different ways to describe 300 different pairs of leggings. The difference is maybe the color and the design--but they are pretty much very similiar. I have renamed all the items with their own unique name but I am still using the same keywords over and over--because I am pretty much forced too.

I am not sure what you mean by the call to action in the meta tags?

Ryshark--if you have any information that you can pass on that you find, please let me know. I am hoping to get my metatags finished this week as I am in the same exact boat as you. Or send me a private message

You have about 160 or so characters to do this. It is a pain to do different meta descriptions for a lot of similar products, just as it is to do unique titles.

I look at the meta descriptions as a super short elevator pitch for that page. You want to have that versus Google just picking a piece of text from your page. Unpredictable things happen then!

Meta Tag is Not Mandatory For The SEO, But It will works like a catalyst to Increase Your Site Ranking in SERP. Meta Tag Will Tell Google & Other Search Engine Bots a Little about Your Site.

Meta tags such as Keywords, Title, and Description is very important to be filled out though these are not the main factor search engines consider when ranking sites, they should not be left off the page. A meta description tag is supposed to be a brief and concise summary of your page's content. A meta keyword tag is supposed to be a summary list of the most important words on your page. They were both proposed in order to make using the web easier.

Well I am just now working on them--I had to add a plugin for Shopify---I am seeing a few results from Google--but I am still buried with work. This ecommerce site is a ton of work.

However, once you've done it - it's little maintenance.

It's nice to see RESULTS from the work, though!

Make sure to also keep up on your Webmaster tools as well - especially in your HTML improvements (this is the place they'll tell you if there is any Meta issues)

But once you have unique meta titles, descriptions, h1 tags, and content PER PAGE, then google is going to LOOOOOVE you. It's all about unique content per page... and the tags are what tells Google that.

Well done.

Google doesn't reward short cuts.

They reward quality, and 'doing it right'.

Well, until very recently, the webmaster guidelines for Bing actually stated that keywords should be included in meta descriptions and that they were important for ranking. That language has disappeared from their website in the last couple of months, inexplicably.

In Yahoo's webmaster guidelines, it states in the section labeled, "Pages Yahoo! wants included in the index: Metadata (including title and description) that accurately describes the contents of a web page."

As far as your problem with very similar products goes, you could certainly create fairly generic boiler plate descriptions where the product name/model number is inserted a couple of times and changed for each product. "The [Acme X-34 rocket launcher] is in stock now at special, discount prices. Buy the [X-34] now and get free shipping this week!" This gives you (barely) unique descriptions and a reason for people to click through. Pretty easy to go through one product at a time and do this. It actually can be done utilizing the CONCATENATE command in an Excel spreadsheet formula where it picks up the brand and product name from your product export file and you can create the meta descriptions for all of your products in seconds.

Dave is giving you a brilliant suggestion.

It's a technique that I've used for mass PPC campaign creation, and I never thought to use it for meta creation.

PPC body creation is CLOSE to meta descriptions, and they have the same purpose (to increase CTR) so the method is, logically, a good use here as well.

Good suggestion.

My two cents about Meta Tags.

My neighbor a recent newcomer to online sales was telling me about his SEO company. He did not know this was skill I was earning a living from. I did a little checking without telling him just what I did and this is what I found. 7400 pages of crappily created pages as it relates to on page optimization. 7400 pages, wow I thought at first glance this guy should have over a 1000 views a day to his website with that many pages of content. Then I did a more comprehensive search of his site and found the company was selling him a pig in a poke. He was paying large money for some rather shoddy work. Images not linked correctly to page, text copied from one page to another. Title tags that are repeats site wide. No meta desc tags at all. What he did have was the indexing nightmare. Spiders delivering a description of his page that often had nothing to do with what he was selling. It actually made me cringe at the money he was paying to be taken like this. I tell you this as a way to impress upon you the importance of clearly defined meta tags. If you don't define your page the search index will and you may not like the result.

I have created a few 600 pages plus web sites. These are not auto sites these are handcrafted to be optimized for the keyword we are targeting. The last client site now grosses over 400K a year of product sales locally. I tell you this not to impress you but to impress on you the very real fact that if you do not define what your page is about, you will be a very unhappy camper. If I had done the same job as the SEO company did for my neighbor. I'd have hung my head in shame.

Here are simple rules when writing Desc Meta Tags. If you are creating a description for a particular Product. You may want to lay it out in a few different ways. 1. Model, color, size and if possible price. 2. Product name, model and color or Brand. 3. Product name and model with color, size ect. Then add descriptive adjectives. Be as succinct as possible in describing the product. If possible for your product, the last part "price" has resulted into great conversions for us. Do not use the manufactures description of the product. Use your own. You can look at all of the auto created amazon affiliate sites to see just how well this dooms them. Do make sure the text you are writing about in the desc is also on your page. Especially the keywords you are targeting. Don't miss this, its fundamental to on page optimization. You don't want use the same exact match text in your description that you have written on page . Make a clearly different description. Changing the syntax to your meta text string can work as well. In fact you will want to rephrase the descriptions on page in a few ways. Make sure to use your h1 - h4 tags to clearly textually match your meta title and desc. On page paragraph content should be a extension of the meta brief description of your product. Think of your page as a book. Title, description supporting content and photos.

Here is a generic example for a specific bed I made up

Acme 1030 Queen Headboard, White button tufted fabric bed. On Sale at only $0.00. Ships Free. In stock and ready to ship today. Lowest price available.

Regarding categories. You can make great inroads here as well. You will want to optimize for brand, Manufactures names or general types such as "Padded Headbords" as in my example above. Do make sure you that you link out of your category page with distinct links. Do not, over use the same exact anchor for your outbound links. Example: Red Queen Padded Headboard, Blue King Padded Headboard and so on. Why? Well if done right your page and meta desc along with the links all fall with in a set value of phrase and syntax for a know keyword the search engines expect. Over use of exact keyword anchor will result in a possible negative value assigned to you page for search results. If done right your category page will rank for multiple keywords.

Regarding Daves great idea using excel to create the meta tags. It's a great start but beware. You will be producing the same tag that every other site has used. So you will not be unique. Use it as a base but do change the description. I can outrank other older sites for the same products by putting in time and consideration into how I optimize a page and meta tags.

Keyword Meta Tags. No one knows for sure if these are exiled in the search algorithms and frankly we have tweaked them just to see if they are still relevant. One case we removed the commas in the keywords and went up in rank (first page placement results) . SO... It's crazy but this is the rule we live by. If it's not on your page it will not be in your keyword list.

Our results show that Yahoo and Bing are much more susceptible to on page optimization more so than Google is at present.

To both Hampton44 and ryshark. If you do the work it will pay off. I promise. I hope this helps.

OnPagePro -

Brilliant analysis.

In fact, you really get into the 'secret' of website construction.

If you 'handmake' your website, and really put love and attention into your website, then you do it 'naturally'.

And that is what the search engines, especially Google likes.

And when you have incentives, calls to action, a sense of urgency,then you're really putting COPYWRITING techniques into your meta as well.

Remember, meta isn't just for Google to see what your page is 'about'.

It's for the search traffic to see what your page is about, and to be engaged from their search.

And increasing your CTR from the results is also a skill you need to hone.

(Webmaster tools gives you this data as well that you can keep tabs on)

Again, brilliantly stated, OnPagePro.

It's optional but I always do. The meta description is used by Google in their SERPS. That tells me that they probably use the meta keywords as well. Just make sure your description is less than 150 characters and you use no more than 10 keywords.

I have started and I probably have about 15% of my descriptions done. Call to actions, engaging descriptions, keywords---I have seen a few more conversions from Google---and I am hoping it is from this. I will keep trucking along. I am still here---even though I have been quiet.

Search engines abandoned meta keywords/tags already 3 years ago. I don't fill them anymore and still receive traffic.

Well--it doesn't take me too long to simply adjust the meta tags, as I optimize each description listing with seo, rewriting descriptions etc. A bit of a process--but hopefully working. I think the call to actions is probably one of the most important aspects of this though.