Meta Tags working for ya?

freespiritbirth · 05-22-2007, 03:10 PM

First off I don't even know if that's the right choice of words. I'm looking to talk about the words that women will put into a search engine to find my website. Is that a meta tag?
Well, I think you're just supposed to list every word anyone might ever put in that could grab your website. So I did. The two biggies for me need to be doula and albuquerque. But it's not until I add "birth" to the search that I make it to the first page on google. What should I be doing or not doing? Does the order of the words entered on the meta tag page make a difference?

All help appreciated!

brilliant · 05-22-2007, 04:01 PM

i'm just building my site now so i'm curious to know the answer...

WildWest Doula · 05-22-2007, 05:22 PM

I worked with a meta tag builder program and here's what I learned:
The order does not matter. If you repeat the same word more than three times it's considered word spamming and your site will be ignored.
For example: birth doula, tucson doula, affordable doula services, postpartum Doula
Doula appears too mant times.
Your meta tags need to include key words such as your name, your business name and what your business does ie birth or postpartum doula. Meta tags should also state key word for each page i.e. services, fees, contact, information.
And lastly to be search engine friendly your meta tag title should not be more than 60 words/characters long including spaces. Meta tag keywords should not be more than 150.
Go Here and type in your website to check your meta tags.
http://www.scrubtheweb.com/

Mile High Doula · 05-23-2007, 12:32 AM

douladot · 05-23-2007, 06:44 AM

Can someone please help me in trying to get meta tags onto my website! I have my site through googlepages and I am beating my head against a brick wall this morning trying to figure this out. I have created the meta tags but obviously don't know where to put them on my site. I have done what I was told to do but they appear on my site and I didn't think they were supposed to be visible to the general public.....just to search engines, which makes me think I am not placing them in the right place some how....If there is anyone who has experience placing meta tags on a googlepage website please help me!!!

analisa · 05-23-2007, 07:32 AM

Your meta tag goes between your head brackets

douladot · 05-23-2007, 09:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by analisa

Your meta tag goes between your head brackets

Well, I understand that much, but I can't seem to get them in the right place and not have it seen when I check my website. I can see the tags where I place them and I don't think you're supposed to be able to see them. I'm just having trouble figuring out EXACTLY where to place them. I think googlepages is also different from other sites that you can create website pages on. So, if anyone has any personal experience with googlepages please help....

analisa · 05-23-2007, 09:44 AM

I can see when I view your source that you have a generic meta tag under your title. Sometimes if your brackets are just right it will show. Sorry I cant be of help. If you go to your page and lokk for the tab on your tool bar that says view sorce you can see your code. good luck

AMotz · 05-23-2007, 09:56 AM

This irritates me too. I did all the above stuff, and I am still not getting the search results I want. Any advice?

douladot · 05-23-2007, 10:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by analisa

I can see when I view your source that you have a generic meta tag under your title. Sometimes if your brackets are just right it will show. Sorry I cant be of help. If you go to your page and lokk for the tab on your tool bar that says view sorce you can see your code. good luck

analisa -- I am VERY computer and web page design illiterate. I here what you are saying to do, but I just don't understand how to do it or what to do once I get there. I pulled up the source you were talking about and it opened up a page on my notepad with all of this stuff on it and I have NO IDEA what to do from there. It is just frustrating and I was hoping someone here had some experience with googlepages in particular that could walk me through the process....

Thanks for trying to help though.

analisa · 05-23-2007, 10:44 AM

Sorry I cant be of help. I dont know google web pages. Hopefully someone knows them and can help you.

Mile High Doula · 05-23-2007, 11:19 AM

Did you figure it out Dottie? I don't see them appearing on your website. I do see them in the body of your source which is weird because they are supposed to be in between the <HEAD> </HEAD> tags but that's it.

emmabella · 05-23-2007, 11:57 AM

Here is a sample of an entire header for a doula site. This should be the VERY first thing at the top of the code on each page.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> 
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> 
<head> 
<title>Eden Doula Services</title> 
<link rel="stylesheet" href="stylesheet.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> 
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> 
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-us" /> 
<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="false" /> 
<meta name="author" content="Eden Design Studio" /> 
<meta name="copyright" content="Copyright (c) Eden Design Studio 2007" /> 
<meta name="description" content="Eden Doula Services offers birth doula
services to pregnant women in the Seattle area." /> 
<meta name="keywords" content="labor doula, birth doula, doula, labor support,
labor partner, home birth, natural birth, water birth, epidural, vbac, easy
birth, fast birth, breastfeeding help, postpartum support, Seattle, Shoreline,
Kirkland, Edmonds, Lynnwood, Mukilteo, Mill Creek, Everett, Marysville, Monroe,
Bellevue, Renton, Arlington, Woodinville, Mountlake Terrace, Kenmore, Snohomish,
Lake Stevens, Monroe, Redmond, Whidbey Island, Clinton, Langley, Freeland,
Renton, Issaquah, Burien, Tukwila, Granite Falls, Sammamish, King County,
Snohomish County" /> 
<meta name="last-modified" content="Sat, 21 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT" /> 
<meta name="mssmarttagspreventparsing" content="true" /> 
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow, noarchive" /> 
<meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days" /> 
</head>

emmabella · 05-23-2007, 11:59 AM

Also, I can't stress enough how important it is for your website to be coded well. If your html code is full of a ton of gobbledy gook, the search engines will have a terrible time indexing it. You can check to see if your site has valid code here: http://validator.w3.org/
Your content also needs to reflect your metatags which means that you should be repeating your keywords all throughout your website... especially the cities that you serve!!!

douladot · 05-23-2007, 12:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by emmabella

Also, I can't stress enough how important it is for your website to be coded well. If your html code is full of a ton of gobbledy gook, the search engines will have a terrible time indexing it. You can check to see if your site has valid code here: http://validator.w3.org/
Your content also needs to reflect your metatags which means that you should be repeating your keywords all throughout your website... especially the cities that you serve!!!

Emily - I went to the validator website and it told me that I basically have all kinds of errors (a full page, 27 in all) on my site. My problem is....I have no idea how to fix it and no extra $ to spend to pay to have someone do it for me. I feel like I am pretty (pardon the french) screwed at this point because I have no idea how to fix these problems. Thanks for the website though to check things out on...it was interesting.