METAPILOT » Meta Tags http://www.metapilot.com/blog SEO & Social Media Marketing Wed, 16 Jun 2010 22:15:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Changing the Information Under Your Website Link (Your Snippet) In Search Engines http://www.metapilot.com/blog/seo-general/change-the-information-under-your-website-link-your-snippet-in-search-engine http://www.metapilot.com/blog/seo-general/change-the-information-under-your-website-link-your-snippet-in-search-engine#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:28:35 +0000 metapilot http://www.metapilot.com/blog/?p=96 The information under your website link is called a snippet and the information contained in the snippet varies depending on the search engine but the majority of the snippet comes from the meta description tag found near the top of the html of each page. Google and Bing tend to construct the snippet entirely from the meta description tag if it was written in such a way that it compliments the written content of that page. Yahoo may more often use some of the meta description and some phrase from the page that includes the keyword that was searched for. It is also possible to get different snippets for different keyword searches even though the same page comes up in the search results.

All of that is the long way of saying that the fastest and easiest way to change your snippet is for your or your web designer to change your meta description tag. The meta description tag should stay within 250 characters, should broadly describe the theme of the page, and should incorporate your target keywords (as opposed to the page’s title tag, which should stay withing 80 characters and should concisely state the thrust of the page as well as incorporate your keywords).

In the description tag, you can put your company name near the beginning if you choose to and it should show up in your snippet–that way, you don’t have to use up any of your 80 characters in the title with your company name.

]]> http://www.metapilot.com/blog/seo-general/change-the-information-under-your-website-link-your-snippet-in-search-engine/feed 0 Do Search Engines Show a Current Version of Your Web Page or an Older Version in Their Results? http://www.metapilot.com/blog/uncategorized/do-search-engines-show-a-current-version-of-your-web-page-or-an-older-version-in-their-results http://www.metapilot.com/blog/uncategorized/do-search-engines-show-a-current-version-of-your-web-page-or-an-older-version-in-their-results#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:06:55 +0000 metapilot http://www.metapilot.com/blog/?p=67 It’s not unusual for a website owner to be aware that the web page snippet (the snippet is the two or three lines of information that show up under your link in the search results and is generally composed of some portion the page’s description meta tag and perhaps, a few words pulled from the copy of the page ) that is showing in the search results is not that of the current version of the web page that actually exists on their site. Understanding whether this constitutes a problem or not requires requires a little bit knowledge and a little bit of digging.

Determining the Issue
First you want to know whether it is only the link and the snippet that are of the old version of your page or if the search engine’s cached version of the page is also an old version of the page. If the search engines have the cached version of the old page and the snippet of the old page we have to dig in one direction; if they have the cached version of the new page but the snippet of the new page, we have to dig in another direction.

The Page Just Isn’t Being Crawled That Often
If the search engine’s cached version of the page is an old version of your page (You can tell by doing a search that usually brings up the individual page in question as a result and then clicking on the “Cached” link at the end of your snippet–the page that then shows is going to be the version of your page that the search engine saw the last time it crawled your site, aka, the cached page.), and the snippet is from an old version of your page, it is most likely that the page has simply not been crawled by the search engine since the new version of the page replaced the old one. When the search engines do crawl the new one, the snippet will likely change (if you’ve revised the text on the page and/or the page title and meta description) and the cached version of the page will be updated.

Stuck With a Yahoo Directory or DMOZ Snippet
If the search engine’s cached version of the page is a new version of your page but the snippet and the link don’t look anything like the new page’s title and meta description then, in most cases, your snippet is being pulled from either the your site’s listing in the Yahoo directory or the DMOZ directory. This occurrence is seen less often than it once was but we still see it here at Metapilot from time to time. If that is the case, first go to the Yahoo Directory and search for your business name and domain name (minus the www) and see if your business comes up as a result. If it does, edit or have your web designer edit your site’s homepage by adding this meta tag below your description meta tag: . If not, go to the DMOZ directory and search for your business name and domain name to see if your site comes up as a result for one of those searches. If so, edit your homepage’s html by adding this meta tag beneath your meta description tag: . Once you’ve added one or both of these meta tags it can take a week or two to a month or two for your snippet to be corrected.

Redirects
Other reasons for the search engine snippet to be out of sync with what you may consider to be the current version of the page, such as domain masking or meta refreshes are beyond the scope of this post but contact me if the other fixes didn’t work and you need to look at other options.

Regardless of which fix you need, it is the time it takes for the search engine to return to your site to see the revised data that will determine how long it will take for the fix to become evident in the search results. I’d say the average time between crawls for a typical site with a small number of links is between one to three months. That amount of time is influenced by you website’s popularity and authority (i.e., how many other websites are linking to your pages within your site and how important do the search engines think those pages that link to you are. More links from sites that are of greater importance will mean that your site gets crawled more often.

]]> http://www.metapilot.com/blog/uncategorized/do-search-engines-show-a-current-version-of-your-web-page-or-an-older-version-in-their-results/feed 0 The Ideal Web Designer Know a Lot About Search Engine Optimization http://www.metapilot.com/blog/seo-general/web-design-and-search-engine-optimization http://www.metapilot.com/blog/seo-general/web-design-and-search-engine-optimization#comments Mon, 28 Aug 2006 02:18:51 +0000 metapilot http://metapilot.com/blog/seo-general/web-design-and-search-engine-optimization I do a lot of optimization support for web design firms who have clients needing a dedicated search engine consultant. I love these jobs because I get to work with a lot good web designers and a lot of good clients that I probably wouldn’t have gotten to work with otherwise.Something I see more and more often in firms that have several designers is that there is a premium on those designers who have a keen eye for the designs, templates and techniques that assist search engine visibility. What’s most noticeable about them is that they don’t seem to stay in one place very long. It’s hard to blame them, it’s hard to turn down a pay raise and the opportunity to do what you really like doing at the same time.

Web site design and programming that is compatible with the efforts of the optimization specialist is highly prized today and the designer who specializes in search compatibility and likes partnering with algorithm specialists and SEO copywriters is like the holy grail. A site can sure move up to the top quickly when all the players are focused and determined to out rank the competitors.

Web Designers: When you’re commencing work on a site that will have a web site optimizer working on it–think CRAWLABILITY. This is the time to work on platform and navigaion. What will the spiders, which are just high-powered browsers with the JavaScript and images turned off, see? If you want to see what a page looks like to the spiders, take a peek at it through the SEO Browser–it can give you a whole new perspective on your web creations. Time spent thinking about these things early on is well spent because if you have to deal with them once the site goes live, you can count on it taking a lot longer and and you can count on having a lot more people breathing down your neck as you do it.

Templates

  • Most programming languages work fine with the search engines—HTML, XHTML, ASP, PHP,
  • Some programming languages and templates work against crawlability—
  • Flash: It just looks like a graphic to the search engines
  • JavaScript: Search engines have problems parsing it and understanding the linksrames: Creates disjointed pages, content and navigation.
  • Splash Pages: They need to have an HTML link to internal pages, at least. Content can be put further down on the page so that it can’t be seen.
  • Make sure you will have control over the Meta tags for each page.

    • On-Page Factors

  • Keep as much content towards the top of the page as possible
  • Move JavaScript and CSS off the page into their own files
  • Leave room for content
  • Paragraphs
  • Content boxes
  • Side bars
  • Think about space for headers—it’s always nice to have an H1 header at the top of the page.
  • Think about the layout of content and whether the page will scale well with a lot more content.
  • Be descriptive with page names—it helps

    • Navigation

  • Use absolute URLs in links rather than relative links
  • Anchor text is important—use keywords as the anchor text whenever possible
  • There is a risk when you use java. If you use it, make sure you can view the links in the HTML source code–and make the URLs absolute.
  • Always make HTML links somewhere on the page if you’re using JavaScript navigation.

    • Meta Tags

  • Title
  • One short sentence containing keywords for the page–keep it under 85 characters
  • Make each page title different for each page.
  • Description Tag
  • Three sentences containing main keywords and secondary keywords
  • Make sure it is place directly under the Title
  • Keywords
  • Not more than about ten of them. This tag is not used by any major search engine
  • Robots Tag
  • “robots” content=”index,follow” is the default of activity all bots so some sites use this tag and some choose not to.

    • For more info, check out our meta tag optimization service.

    ]]>     http://www.metapilot.com/blog/seo-general/web-design-and-search-engine-optimization/feed 0     Moving Website to a Previously Banned / Penalized Domain http://www.metapilot.com/blog/seo-case-studies/moving-website-to-a-previously-banned-penalized-domain http://www.metapilot.com/blog/seo-case-studies/moving-website-to-a-previously-banned-penalized-domain#comments Tue, 01 Aug 2006 19:55:36 +0000 metapilot http://metapilot.com/blog/?p=6 The actual moving of a website from one domain to another is about as easy as moving files from one folder on your hard drive to another. It is when you take the search engines into account, i.e. indexation, back links, duplicate content, caching and continuity of search engine results, that the the process takes on a whole life of its own. In this case study of the miami search engine optimization company metapilot.com there is also the issue of the domain having been used for some “spammin’ and jammin’” by the previous owner, changing the complexion of the process from just methodically taking the right steps in the right order at the right time to playing a guessing game with the search engines and ultimately a guessing game with the success of the of the site.

    Moving to a domain that’s been banned and/or penalized in Google, Yahoo and MSN and not having detailed knowledge of the history of how the search engines have treated the site is like leaping over a wall without knowing what is on the other side. It leaves open a whole realm of possibilites including never being able to get the ban or penalty removed and never getting the site listed again.

    So anyway, here we go:

    * 08-05-2006—>

    * The .net site map had been deleted so it hadn’t been verifying in Google site maps for some time prior to this. Left it deleted for the time being.

    * Each .net page 301?d over to the same page name on the .com domain via .htaccess file.

    * Added .com site map in Google Webmaster Tools.

    * Requested verification of .com site map and it was verified using the Meta tag verification.

    * Now that all 301’s are in place, submitted .net to Google search, Yahoo, MSN


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