SEO

>I am very interested in what other I-searchers have found and
>follow re: char length in Meta description and optimizing "other"
>tags.
- Kelly Blazes, SearchReturn Digest #009

Up until last Spring, we used to use a large set of meta tags, about 50. We did this for many years and had very good results from all our client projects. We knew that many of the tags were just taking up space, but felt if they were being recognized that it would benefit the site, and thought we might be getting some benefit for "making the effort". Since we spent quite a bit of time on the tags and provided them with the appropriate data and not just a bunch of keyword phrases in all of them, we felt it was worth the effort. We also used to add the description as an HTML comment, since we had seen that it was often picked up instead of the decryption tag. These methods never hurt and seemed to help. Results for all projects we very positive so we never did any testing. We also use to spend time on a site's ALT tags.

Then last year I took a 1-page site of a client and as a favor optimized the page with only title tag, meta description tag, and keywords meta tag. I then started adding pages of content on a regular basis, all with just basic, simple optimization for what was on the page.

The results were startling.

This was a favor to a client, so we did no keyword research, and only optimized the tags quickly based on page content. In addition, this was not a "proper" site but only had information about the client's business on the home page. Still, about 6 months after the traffic had increased by many times, the client was actually contacted and secured a project from someone in California (We are in Minnesota). The reason I did this for free is that the client is my oldest one and he did not see the need for a web site, much less SEO. He now realizes what I've been talking about for the past 5-6 years and if he wasn't so busy with exiting clients, I'm sure he would have us to help him with a proper site & submission of the site. We only put up about 6 links to the site and submitted to maybe 15 search engines and directories, a far cry from the 180 that we normally do.

As a result of this experiment, we now only use those 3 tags in our optimization, and do not optimize H tags or other things that you hear people talk about. They may help, but they also increase the time/cost and until what we do stops working, we won't be making things more complex.

For tag lengths, we have changed what we use a little:

Title tag: Up to 85 characters max, but some do go over without noticeable harm. I like at least 60 and generally use 70 chars.

Description: We use to always use as close to the 255 character limit, but we are seeing more and more sites limit this to about 150 with some at 200 and some at 100 chars. We try to craft the description so that if it is cut off at those points, it will still look and read well. We may standardize on 150 since it's a bit of work to match those cutoff points.

Keywords tags: Not very important, but if you use common sense, it may help. We used to have a 1,000 character limit, but now try to keep it down to about 400-600 chars. If you are going to use keyword phrases, use commas to separate them. We use to really fill this up with many variations of what was on the page as well as things not on the page. This was limited to words that meant the same, but different spellings and different combinations of what was on the page. Now it's less work just picking things from our keyword results that are about the same as what is on the page.

We use as many scored keyword phrases as possible in titles and descriptions, tempered with use of good English and advertising copy.

Thank you,
Chris Nielsen
BizProLink-Internet.com