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How do I set up keywords for my website?
Hello TXP experts!
I need to do some optimization of my websites but I don’t know where to list or set the keywords. Would someone please direct me to where I need to do this?
Thank you,
Nancy
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Re: How do I set up keywords for my website?
Nancy, what kind of optimization are you looking to do?
If you’re thinking about search engine optimisation then note that search engines no longer pay any attention to the keywords meta tags.
Doug.
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Re: How do I set up keywords for my website?
Hi Doug,
Yes, I read that in one of your other posts to someone else. But a SEO person called me today and told me differently. He named off my search words and their hit count in the keyword index and I feel I could improve them. Why would he tell me the search engines still pay attention to meta tags if they don’t? I’m sure it’s not just so he and his company could make money. Obviously if he wants me to be a happy customer he would want to do his job the best he can and get my site up to the top. Why would he tell me it would be advantageous to improve some of my keywords?
Nancy
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Re: How do I set up keywords for my website?
. . . . I guess whether meta tags are used or not used, important or not important, it won’t hurt if I have some good ones on my site, you know, just in case. I’d just like to know where I can find them in TXP so I can improve them? Whether it works or not I’ll feel Ive done my best.
Thank you,
Nancy
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Re: How do I set up keywords for my website?
Nancy,
You will need something like the following in your templates
<txp:if_individual_article>
<txp:if_keywords>
<meta name="keywords" content="<txp:keywords />" />
<txp:else />
</txp:if_keywords>
</txp:if_individual_article>Keywords can be added in the ‘write’ tab under the “Meta” link in the left column. Have in mind that google has announced that it does not look at them. Adding meta descriptions would be better.
Last edited by colak (2011-09-30 04:49:16)
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: How do I set up keywords for my website?
Hi Nancy,
Here’s an article from Google Webmaster blog: Google does not use keywords meta tag
While the keywords meta-tag isn’t important, keywords in content are still critical.
You want to make your page as specific to one topic/subject as you can and have a naturally high density of relevant keywords in your text. You need to be careful not to over-stuff your content with keywords. Keep it readable by humans!
Here’s a quick little check-list:
- Title tag (keep these short and natural, put keywords nearer the front if you can.)
- Meta Description (not used when ranking your page, but someone seeing you page in the search results would see a highlighted keyword in your description as a positive sign)
- H1 (and subheadings H2, H3 etc)
- In the content itself, if making one of the keyword instances bold makes sense, then give that a go too.
- Would it be relevant in the ALT tag of images on the page?
Here’s a couple of good SEO beginners guides: :
Google’s Search Engine Optimization starter Guide
SEOmoz’s Beginners guide to SEO (Keywords are covered in this chapter )
It might also be worth checking out the rah_metas plugin.
If you’re in a competitive niche, not having your keywords listed in the meta-keywords tag makes it (a little) harder for your competition to tell which keywords you’re targeting.
Hope this helps. If an SEO is telling you that the keywords meta-tag really matters then I’d proceed with caution.
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Re: How do I set up keywords for my website?
Also image title tags are no longer necessary for SEO.
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: How do I set up keywords for my website?
colak wrote:
Also image title tags are no longer necessary for SEO.
My understanding is to use image title where it helps the user especially to if it helps to make the content more accessible. (If you add a title, will it help someone reading it to understand the information the image is trying to convey?)
If you’re optimising for image search, then I believe the context of provided by the surrounding paragraph text helps, but this is not something that I’ve tested myself.
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Re: How do I set up keywords for my website?
douglgm wrote:
My understanding is to use image title where it helps the user especially to if it helps to make the content more accessible.
True. I also think that titles are needed for 508 rules, but since this was about SEO, I thought I should post the link.
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: How do I set up keywords for my website?
Nice link :-)
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Re: How do I set up keywords for my website?
Thank you both very much. Your replies have been very helpful and have cleared up my confusion. I am revamping one of my sites and the information you provided will be of great asset when I choose headings and important content.
Also, the suggestion to use descriptions under the meta link on the write page makes my job so much easier.
Off to work on it I go!
Blessings,
Nancy
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Re: How do I set up keywords for my website?
For anyone reading this thread, it appears that Bing are now paying attention to the keywords tag again. However, they’re using it a signal to indicate spam.
See: The Meta Keywords Tag Lives At Bing & Why Only Spammers Should Use It
Last edited by douglgm (2011-10-19 20:19:24)
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