[thelist] Metatags - we are not ranked anywhere in the search engines - PLEASE HELP!

[Dejan Kozina]

Ugh. You really have some design problem here.
Let me try to delve into it point by point looking at the source of the 
home page...

1)What you refer to as 'meta tags' are really 'meta keywords' which have 
long been known as deadweight regarding their indexing effectiveness.

2)One of the things search engines do consider is the title tag. Yours 
is empty.

3)Next thing is the content of the 'meta description' tag. This is 
something you do it right. The first 255 characters of the description 
are considered by the search engines, so the last 150 chars are ballast 
again, but this won't do any harm to your ranking.

4)Now for the real trouble. What search engines want is content, 
content, content high up in the page! This means real textual content, 
not images of words. More, the content is weighted accordingly to the 
position in the source: the earlier a keyword comes in the source, the 
weighter it is. You have an appalling amount of, well, bloat between the 
end the meta keywords (the last text an engine might relate to) and the 
first lines of real stull (Airtech is a...). To be exact, 17,671 
characters of wasted opportunities (scripts, layout-only tables, images 
with no relevant alt attributes, java applets and so on). When you think 
of the rollover scripts as so central to your page to have to be 
inserted before anything else, well, the search engine just believes 
your words and indexes the scripts accordingly higher than the rest...

No offense meant, but your home page is the prototype example case of 
why the presentational stuff should be done with CSS (or of why one 
should first learn his HTML handcoding it, before splashing out for 
Dreamweaver).

Your website seems so to have been designed for visual appearance only, 
without any consideration for search engine effectiveness, accessibility 
(are you required to follow Section 508? Good luck), conformity to web 
standards, device independence ...

If search engine placement and/or Section 508 are important to you, you 
may think of starting anew. Hard to swallow, but I really don't see a 
way to quickfix this.

djn


Sylvia Braunstein wrote:
> Since 2000 approximately, why? 
> What is a paid listing?
> 
> www.rugged.com is our site and the one the manager is complaining about.
> 
> These words appear on each page, both in the contents and metatags.
> 
> How do I resolve this problem?
> 
> 
> On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 01:30:19 -0000, Wayne
> <wayne at freelance-developer.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>>How long has the site been live?
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
>>[mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of M. Seyon
>>Sent: 24 February 2005 00:10
>>To: Sylvia Braunstein; thelist at lists.evolt.org
>>Subject: Re: [thelist] Metatags - we are not ranked anywhere in the
>>search engines - PLEASE HELP!
>>
>>Message from Sylvia Braunstein (2/23/2005 06:54 PM)
>>
>>>This is the feedback I got from the marketing manager about the report
>>>listed below:
>>>
>>>OK, we stink...anyone know why?  Although it seems we use page/site
>>>metatags, even searching for specific ones we list like "Rugged VME"
>>>or "MPEG2", etc. didn't list us at all.
>>
>>That's not much to go on. Maybe if you show us a link we can provide more
>>helpful advice. But regarding google specifically, these two links may shed
>>some light:
>>http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html
>>http://www.google.com/webmasters/index.html
>>
>>Essentially, I don't think Google puts very much weight on META tags as
>>they're so easily spammed.
>>
>>
>>>  And how the hell does
>>>MangoDSP get their own isolated Google listing?  What's up with that?
>>>Any ideas, anyone?  I'm pretty bummed about this.
>>
>>Are you referring to a paid listing, maybe?
>>
>>regards.
>>-marc
>>
>>--
>>Trinidad Carnival in all its photographic glory. Playyuhself.com
>>http://www.playyuhself.com/
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