Looking For Traffic In All The Wrong Places - Part 1

We need to first discuss Meta Tags. Meta tags are a good way to setup your environment for traffic and advertising purposes. Meta Tags tell search engines how to display your listing within the search results. The meta tags we will discuss is "Title", "Description", and "Keywords". Please note: YOU DO NOT NEED TO SET UP A TITLE META TAG FOR YOUR JOURNAL HOME BLOG! THE TITLE META TAG IS THE SAME AS YOUR WEBLOG AND ENTRY TITLE!

When a web surfer does a search, the search engine will gather information found within the Meta tags and display its results. Such as the Title (link) of a search results is usually displayed because the Meta Tag has informed the search engine that this is the site title. If no Title Meta Tag exist then the search engine will determine the title by the content of the page. Meta tags should be placed in between the HEAD tags within your blog template HTML code, usually found at the very top of the HTML code. You can see the attached text file for examples of these meta tags.

Title Meta Tag:

PLEASE NOTE: You do not need to add the title meta tag to your blog. The weblog and entry title is the same as the title meta tag.

The title meta tag will be the title within the search results which links to your blog. In Journal Home, the Title meta tag is the same as your weblog and entry title. You can change your weblog title in the Journal Home member section, Edit My Profile. Your entry title is created when you create a new entry. You will know the title of the page by paying attention to the content at the top left of your web browser. The title should be short, catchy, and precise. Remember the title will usually be the first thing a person will see, before clicking on your link. The title meta tag should be 7 words or less. It should directly inform the web surfer what your blog is about. If your blog is within the search results then it should (hopefully) be what the web surfer is looking for, but the web surfer must see this information within the title to actually click the link. The title should be keyword-rich because relevancy is important. When search engines grab websites which match the searched keyword they pull results which are relevant. The title is most of the time polled for relevancy. I suggest changing your title once a year, along with your entire keyword strategy. In some cases you will switch up more frequent than that or less frequent, but once a year is because it usually takes at least a year for your keyword strategy and meta tag strategy to gain popularity within all search engines. By switching things around you will be able to tackle other keyword strategies and meta tags strategies which produce different results for other searched keywords. This way you are gaining search engine results from your previous keyword and meta tag strategies as well as your most recent. This creates a steady flow of traffic from different spectrums of the web.

Description Meta Tag:

The description meta tag is the description which describes and details what your blog is about. This description will be shown within the search results usually succeeding the title of the search results. Description tags should be enticing but honest and truthful. The description meta tag should be 30 words or less. When creating your description tag you should ask yourself: Why would someone click on this link? Ask yourself: If I was a web surfer looking for information about my niche, what (description) will make me click on this link? The description tag is where you should give more in-depth information and description about your blog/site/niche. You should include a description meta tag within the HTML code of your blog template, place the meta tag between the HEAD tags. See the attached text file for examples of meta tags.

Keyword Meta Tag:

The keyword meta tag is not visible within the search results, but it may be one of the most prominent tags. The keyword meta tag allows you to validate keywords which relate to your blog. The search engine will see the keyword tag and display results based on its relevancy. It is not necessary to repeat keywords which are already covered within your title and description, because the keyword tag is for the purpose of including keywords which are not used within your title or description tags, but I do suggest repeating keywords which you have already used and are most relevant, because it helps keyword density. I also suggest to use a maximum of 15 keywords, you can use more (an unlimited amount) but it wouldn't do much good to use too many, in fact it can hurt you more than anything. Your blog/site can become penalized by search engines if you use too many keywords or try to manipulate the search results by using non-relevant keywords or overly repetitive. One other thing I suggest, which is usually disputed by most webmasters, is to NOT use commas for separating keywords. I suggest this because by NOT using commas you are able to have your keywords consolidated. Commas separate your keywords and you will need to create exact matches and use repetitive keywords for each keyword phrase....example: "free blog, blog free, free blogs host, host free blogs" By not using commas your tag will be similar to this: "free blog blogs host"...any of the searched phrases (free blog, blog free, free blogs host, host free blogs) are covered by the NO COMMA scheme and will be a part of the results, without wasting keywords with repetition. In the past, when search engines were young to the web, commas were a must, because search engines couldn't properly decipher or consolidate keywords not separated by commas, but in today's market search engines have progressed (since search engine algorithm is top secret and frequently changes, I do not have any fact, except for my search engine results do pretty well), but I couldn't imagine why a search engine would be stagnated because of commas in the keyword tag, it makes no sense to me in this competitive market. Search engines are intelligent enough to correct your spelling, display relevant results, read meta tags, and dig through billions of web pages, but can't consolidate keywords. It doesn't make sense to me, so I suggest NOT using commas for keyword meta tags. You should include a keyword meta tag within the HTML code of your blog template, place the meta tag between the HEAD tags. See the attached text file for examples of meta tags.

For normal web pages (aside from Journal Home blog pages) meta tags should be embedded in the code of every page with slightly different title, description, and keyword tags, because you do not want your web pages to cancel each other out by having duplicate tags. For your Journal Home blog you do not need to worry about different pages because you only have 1 location to create your meta tags.

You should become familiar with meta tags and create a description and keyword meta tag for your blog. Go ahead log into your Journal Home account and click on "Edit Template" in the member section and place your newly created meta tag in the proper section (between the HEAD tags). Note: Your blog may not already have meta tags, therefore you will not see the META indication. See the attached text file for examples of META tags.

We'll continue next week. Take care, Manuel!

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