Meta Keywords and Search Engines

[Porte]

:hi:

Today, I have a few questions for SEO guys.

Do I really need to focus and work hard on <meta> tags; description and keywords? ~ I mean will it affect keywords and search engines at all?

Because right now, I spend time to allocate keywords for each seperate page. however I am not sure if thats just right.

I wonder how important the description and keywords meta tags are for search engines like Google?

I once thought I could get rid of that additional stuff as Google will automatically extract my description and my top keywords for specific pages without help. This made me question: Why meta tags then if a SE is capable of extracting that info alone?

I wish I can find the answer to this.


My second question..

I am using on average 2,3 keywords max per any page, I use the most occuring keywords..and I do not know is that too low number? do I need dozens of keywords for each page or just 2,3 descriptive one would be fine?

Lastly..

Does SE pay attention to Titles/URLs? Do they have to be keyword specific too?

Sorry guys.. quite on the beginning track for seo.

 

[John Doe]

Titles/URLs are way more important than meta tags! Meta keywords don`t affect much, description does matter.

 

[Porte]

John, so I should spend more time on making up good titles and friendly urls rather then on meta keywords?

I just noticed that google shows my page for specific keywords if they are within titles. But how can I avoid duplicate titles?

I mean; I today write about a subject thats commonly used..would google interpret this as duplicate content?

 

[John Doe]

Right, I would recommend to spend more time on titles, URLs, descriptions. Duplicate content is a problem only if you make straight copy/paste. Commonly used object makes high SERP more difficult to achieve because of tight competition. Duplicate titles are not a problem - even site with same title for all pages is ok.

 

[Keral_Patel]

John, so I should spend more time on making up good titles and friendly urls rather then on meta keywords?

I just noticed that google shows my page for specific keywords if they are within titles. But how can I avoid duplicate titles?

I mean; I today write about a subject thats commonly used..would google interpret this as duplicate content?

If it is content based site and if you know that the pages are going to be increasing Like in Blog or Forum. Then just set the script in such a way that it takes the title and description and meta tags from the content itself.

And you can spend much more time concentrating on the content itself on the page.

Yes Meta tags and description does help but if you keep on doing it, that may demoralize you. So I think let the script do it. If you can tell us more about the site itself then maybe I can help you with some plugin or a piece of code that will do this work for you.

Going by probabilities the script might not extract the best keywords for some pages but its all okay when you get more time to concentrate on the content.

 

[Porte]

Indeed Nick. The problem is that I need more time to concentrating on content.
The script I use is Wordpress 2.3.1 I found it very handy, and very expandable for my articles.

I already use today a plugin called "All in one seo pack". actually what I am doing now is:

Creating the article with suitable post title and content.

Then the plugin allows me to specify titles in "options" I am already working with post_name only as title and enabling permalinks to allow friendly urls

e.g. I write about weight loss precedure. I make the title this way

Weight Loss Surgery

then url is http://domain.com/weight-loss-surgery

Now the plugin extracts the first 10 words I guess from my article and uses them as meta description. I understand from this I need to really focus on title and first 20 words, right? Like making them keyword rich

But the problem is the plugin does not create meta keywords. but I notice if i use wordpress tags, it will automatically use these tags as meta keywords, or I can just enter meta keywords manually for each article which is time-consuming.

After all this what is your plain advice to me. am I doing ok If I just forget about meta keywords? or you suggest to me that I make a tags map for my blog?

When I checked google, it shows my title and description as extracted by the plugin exactly. So i think it does its job extracting meta from my article on the fly. But <meta keywords> is still the question. Do I need them?

 

[John Doe]

Meta keywords - better to have, but unimportant. You do not actually need them, but in some cases and by some small SE-s they may affect a bit. So, deal with them, if all more important things are done.

 

[Porte]

I think i will just not set them right now.. maybe at later stage, when I have time and enough content.. I will start adding tags by hand to each page. I think until then title/desc should do fine. thanks for help

 

[Keral_Patel]

Easy one here are some plugins that I have used on my own blog. http://www.keralpatel.com/some-plugins-i-have-used/

Might interest you. It allows you to decide the meta tags at the time of publishing the post.