Cms Article Meta Data, Are Meta Keywords useful? Options

[roxyyo]

I'm using the free Joomla CMS system for article management. There is a tab for meta description and meta keywords. Should I bother with Meta Keywords or just Meta Description, or neither?

Another question, if anyone knows, do the spiders see the article titles and treat them like a heading 1 formatting when they are published to a page through the CMS wysiwyg editor? I had the articles with Heading 1 titles but it displayed the titles twice so I removed the title from the article body. Just wondering.

[Jill]

Should I bother with Meta Keywords or just Meta Description, or neither?

It certainly doesn't hurt it you have an extra 1 minute to spare.

do the spiders see the article titles and treat them like a heading 1 formatting when they are published to a page through the CMS wysiwyg editor? I

Does your source code show them as an H1?

Either way, it doesn't matter since there's no evidence of H1's actually helping rankings. At least not with Google.

[roxyyo]

Thank you.

Next question: what is the max length for a meta description?

Bonus question: should I bother repeating keywords that are in article title and meta description, or just relevant extra keywords?

Can I have one more? These are just article abstracts for paid content. Is including keywords that are in the article but not the abstract a bad idea? Will the search engines try to match keyword tags to spiderable content?

Thanks.

[Jill]

Next question: what is the max length for a meta description?

There is none.

Bonus question: should I bother repeating keywords that are in article title and meta description, or just relevant extra keywords?

Should you repeat them where?

Is including keywords that are in the article but not the abstract a bad idea?

No, you can do whatever you want with it.

Will the search engines try to match keyword tags to spiderable content?

They really just ignore the keywords tag. (For the most part.)

Have you read the Tips for Newbies articles?

[qwerty]

Next question: what is the max length for a meta description?

There is none.

That's true, but there is a max length for a snippet. I don't know what it is but there just has to be. Now, since the only real use of a meta description is having a place where you're got your most important keywords along with maybe a call to action in a nice, compact, well-written chunk so that a search engine will use it as your snippet in lieu of bits of text pulled from the page or your ODP description, I'd recommend keeping it pretty short -- a couple of sentences, three at most.

[Jill]

Well, that's true, Qwerty. They'll only show a certain number of characters in the actual "snippet."

However, I just checked my test for this and the nonesense word at the end of my extra long meta tag, do show up in the snippet. In fact, it works like a charm.

Let's see, the actual meta description length is 138 words, 742 characters (with spaces), 9 sentences. The word that shows up (as well as the last sentence before it), is at the very end.

It's funny, I put it up ages ago to test, and don't think I ever actually looked at the results before now.

FTR, Yahoo just shows the first 46 words (240 characters and 2.5 sentences) of my Meta description when I use the nonesense word to search.

And interestingly enough, MSN shows the bit of the Meta D. that has the word in it, but then grabs the beginning of the content on the site for the rest of the description.

Ask Jeeves shows just the one-word as the snippet, and no surrounding text.

[roxyyo]

Yes I've read the articles. Specifically, I was wondering if the search engines regard repeated keywords as a form of keyword spam. You suggested in one of your articles not to repeat a keyword in your keyword tag more than once, including stemmings. So I was wondering if there was some kind of penalty or something but I guess not, it's just not necessary.

About including keywords not in the abstract, I was wondering if the engines pick up on stuff like if you are a "black hat" spammer you would try to stuff for popular but irrelevant keywords or something, that the engines would think I was trying that, even though the keywords are relevant to the subject and full text article, but the spider would not find all those keywords in the actual abstract.

I for the most part don't bother with meta keywords for the same reason you don't, but yeah, I did have a bit of extra time on my hands today (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Jill]

You suggested in one of your articles not to repeat a keyword in your keyword tag more than once, including stemmings.

No, I'm quite sure I didn't.

More likely I said something like more than 3 or 4 times. Of course, I wrote that article back when I still believed the Meta keyword tag might actually make a difference to anything besides misspellings.

[dbmasters]

One thing to look at, while this may not be true anymore, I did notice a long time ago that many CMS's didn't have dynamic titlebar content, it always just spewed out the default title...this may have (and hopefully has) changed in the last couple/few years...but I do know that the lack of dynamic titlebars and easy to use CMS's was the catalyst that made me homebrew my own CMS...since titlebar content seems to weigh pretty heavily in search engine rankings on some search engines...

Anyway, just figured I'd lob that in since the topic made me think about that...

[Michael Martinez]

Ahem!

There is plenty of evidence showing that H1 headers help rankings. Jill is just one of those people who don't believe in them.

Anything on your page that emphasizes specific sub-sections of text will help your rankings:

1) Title tag

2) H1 header

3) Large size font (with respect to other font sizes)

4) Bolded text

5) Outbound link anchor text

6) Italicized text


No one outside the search engines knows how much each element affects your rankings. But I have some pages that rank almost exclusively on one or two of the above elements. H1 headers and titles can be a killer combo, even in highly competitive expressions where other people are relying extensively on inbound linkage.

[Jill]

Anything on your page that emphasizes specific sub-sections of text will help your rankings:

No, they won't. Especially if it makes your page look optimized.

[qwerty]

A note to those who are new to the war of Headings Count vs. Headings Don't Count -- I don't care which side you're on. I'm a conscientious objector myself (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) But I always use headings, because they're important for reasons other than ranking. If they help ranking, then great -- I've got them. If they don't, I don't care. I'll use them anyway.

[Michael Martinez]

Until the search engines stop analyzing on-page content for relevance, these on-page factors will continue to be counted regardless of what people say.

H1 header tags, title tags, bolded text -- they are well documented aspects of Web page content that is used to determine what is important on the page.

None of them are "make it or break it" factors (there is no such thing, when it comes to search engine rankings).

[Jill]

As long as the words are being used on the page, they don't have to be bolded or italized to make it known that they're important. They simply need to be the focus of the content.

[Michael Martinez]

"Don't have to be" doesn't mean that these tags don't work. There are plenty of technical references which show that they are taken into consideration.

To say they are meaningless or don't work is not the same as to say they are not mandatory or required for success.

They are meaningful, they do work, but they are not required. You can get the good rankings in any number of ways.

In the end, Jill, we still agree on that fundamental point: there is no one way to do it, and everyone has a unique site and content that is best served by a customized approach.

I'll continue to use the tags because I know they do help. Some people will continue to use links because they know the links do help. Other people will continue to use other things because they know they do help.

There is no magic, no secret, except diligence and flexibility.