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When you think of Meta tags (on websites), there are 2 types that are critical for you to know about:
- Keywords
The used to be the keywords that you wanted the page to appear in the search listing, if you typed one (or more) of them in a search engine (e.g. Google).
- Description
The Description is a short readable sentence describing the page.
Don't confuse the two... ;)
The Keywords Meta tag
Strange as it may sound... leave the Keywords meta tag empty!
Historically, the keywords meta tag was used to assist Search engines to index a pages content.
This led to the practice known as "Keyword stuffing", where people would put any keyword that they
wanted to be found for... whether they were relevant to the page/website or not!
A few years ago, the major search engines started to significantly reduce the "weight"
of the keywords in the keywords meta tag, until they were worth hardly anything at all (aka nothing).
However, at the same time, they also introduced penalties for using keywords that weren't relevant for the page. If you don't use the keywords metatag, then you can't get penalised. ;)
So how do the search engines determine the relevant keywords for a page?
They scan the content of the page, and generate the list of keywords themselves!
The Description meta tag
This is a common question, that I've often been asked... what's with the Description meta tag?
How does Google, and other search engines, decide what description to use?
The answer is surprisingly simple... here's the order of use:
- The first ~256 characters of the Description metatag for the page.
(Don't hold me to that number, as it changes depending on the search engine, and many other factors!)
- If the page doesn't have a Description metatag, then the website's DMOZ entry will be used instead.
Getting your website listed in DMOZ is a very lengthy process... I don't recommend it unless you are willing to spend a lot of time and also "Hurry up and wait"!
- The final option, if neither of the two above are present, is that the search engine will display the first paragraph of text that it find on the page... up to ~256 characters (as in the first point).
Don't hold me to that though... I've noticed that if you search for phrases in Google, that Google may display the text surrounding that phrase instead!
With the phrase highlighted or even in bold.
Until next time!
Article provided courtesy of:
Jabin Hutchinson,
The Jabinski Code.
Looking to change your meta keywords/description for a Joomla Static Content, or Content Item?
When you're editing either of them, look to the right of the page... there's a whole series of tabs. One of these tabs is "Meta Info".
Click on the "Meta Info", and you'll notice two familar fields... Description & Keywords!
Enter the page's description in the "e;Description" field.
Leave the "Keywords" field empty... or enter some if you really, really want to.
:)
Products, in Virtuemart, will automatically use the product's short description in the Description meta tag.
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