Hi,
I've built my site and am now trying my best at SEO. As a newbie I'm working my way through the best I can. I really want to do as much as I can myself and have been amazed by all there is to know. My head is spinning. My question now is, I have run my site through the Whois domain tool and find my title relevancy at 50% and wonder how I can improve that? I have done some research and it seems the title must be mentioned in the meta tag description. I am just not sure within the network solutions template to do that. My first thought is under pages and editing my home page. But there my title is the first sentence in my meta tag. I sell Irish gifts and when I run my competitors sites through the analyzer I see some at 100%. Some don't even have their name as the title just Irish gifts, Claddagh rings etc. I guess I'm wondering if there is a way to somehow change somethings and improve that title rating?
my site is www.tinkerscart.com
Thanks!
Cheryl

Nice looking site!

My first suggestion to answer your question is that you should beware of falling into the meta tag trap. There are tons of companies out there that offer all sorts of help to improve your meta tags and rankings but if you research the search engines they claim that many don't use the meta tags anymore. I know some do and some don't.

So....your title tag should match the info on your web page. Each page should have a unique title because each page should be different, offering different products or content. Your home page Title is: "The Tinker's Cart Quality Irish Gifts. All the best from the Emerald Isle." However, your web store Logo shows: "The Tinker's Cart..Fine Irish Gifts & Custom Embroidery" You should try to match the two. On that page they want to see the same words in the title also placed somewhere else on the page within a product description or name. The more important items on each page should have the title, description and keyword tags include the same terms. Try to add items on your home page that include the same words you use in the title for that page.

Each page should also have a description tag that is unique to the items or content on only that page. Be specific. Don't just throw out every possible word(s) to include all things from your site. Keep each page as close as possible to what is actually on that page and only that page. The search engines will pull matching words from each page no matter where they are. So if someone is looking for embroidery on your home page it is only listed once as a link in the left column. Don't worry about being grammatically correct in your descriptions. Be short and sweet, kind of attention grabbing.

Your keywords should also be specific to the item you have on each page. If you sell a Claddagh Birthstone Ring that is made from sterling silver, Use that in your keywords first.

Your page Title should be exactly the same as the description used on that page for the product, in the exact order it is on the page. So the page title should be (and is) Claddagh Birthstone Ring, The page link should be (and is),http://tinkerscart.com/claddaghbirthstonering.aspx The meta description tag should start with "Claddagh Birthstone Ring", The keywords should begin with "Claddagh Birthstone Ring". Understand?

The other things to consider when choosing keywords is spelling errors and local terms used to describe the same thing. Use a keyword tool to find similar search terms.

I hope this helps a little to get you started.

Good luck.

Andy B.

Cheryl, this is a very handy tool, I too agree that Meta tags aren't AS important as Title Tags, however I think there is a reason that the search algorithms are kept a secret, so I use meta tags wherever I can, because who knows when they will change their mind about them again. Here is a tool that will give you some good information about your page, just paste the address of the page in the box skip the other stuff and hit submit, this tool isn't a fixall or guaranteed to get you results but it will help you get your content, keywords, and title all in line so that your pages will "Match". Hope this helps you out as well. Page Analyzer

Andy,
Thanks for the info! I have a lot of work ahead of me :-) I've spent a good amount of time getting the site to look the way I want but now it seems the important part is just beginning. I really appreciate all your advice and am going to start on it. I did realize that my home page was lacking info. Because my header is an image I create in photo shop, it doesn't give any info for the search engines to pick up. It's just an image. An image without an alt tag I'm told. So I'm now learning the importance of alt tags too. I did enter info on my footer and under the header. I mean before there really wasn't anything on that page with my address nor a description of the business. So much to learn but I have to admit I'm hooked and find it all fascinating.
Cheryl

Ken..thanks for the tip about the analyzer tool. I guess I won't be sleeping tonight :-)

Andy,
I think I have the same issue with my web store logo. That is just a header that was made in photoshop. I can go in and change it to read the same as the title but are the search engines seeing that text anywhere as it is just one large image I've created?

Why change your image if you can easily change the title of your home page to match what is in the image? I just checked and you don't seem to have any alt text on your images. These are like adding free keywords to each page. You have to think in terms of who will be looking for the products you have to sell and what search terms they will use. You have to match your web pages to those terms in order to be found in the search results. For example. You have a site that sells Irish gifts and sausage. (really ?, Irish meat...LOL.(IMG:http://forums.networksolutions.com/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ) Doesn't everyone? What makes the items that you sell even the littlest bit unique? You need to explore that difference and expand upon it to draw those exact customers to your site. The idea is if you sell something that is green you have to compete with everyone else who sells anything green.
But...if you sell a green four leaf shamrock with gold leaf trim model number 123, use the whole product description to distinguish yours from others, as I said be specific to each product. You also have the benefit of capturing anyone who happens to be looking for that exact item. This is how the SEO companies take your money. Think about it, how many searches are going to look for a "green four leaf shamrock with gold leaf trim model number 123"? you are almost guaranteed a No. 1 ranking on Google, Yahoo, Bing...etc. AND if your lucky, someone in the next 10 years will enter that as their search term.

The idea is don't try to do too much with each page of your site. It is relatively easy to create a web page to rank in the top ten in any of the search engines. However, if no one uses the search terms needed to find your site, what difference does it make if you rank really high for keywords that no one uses. Keep it simple. Sell one product at a time and design each page with only that product in mind. That includes all product descriptions, image text, alt text, links text, anchor text(what..? something else I need to learn??).......what all this means is basically the stuff that pops up when you hover your mouse over a link or image or anywhere on the site that leads to somewhere else on the site. Just because your mouse is hovering over a picture of a watch doesn't mean you can't use keywords to describe it.

Lots to learn, pretty easy to understand.

He who is not strong must needs be cunning!
An té nach mbíonn láidir ní folláir dó bheith glic

Cheryl ,

Mdsource is absolutelly correct, relavance and content is part of the whole equation. There isn't much that I may add to that. I've heard that most of sites lost rank after they migrated from v4 to v7 and some are still suffering, even a year later. We just migrated a little over 2 months ago. We suffered the same effect, but after doing something we are #1,2,3 or top 10 for the great majority of out product pages. Quality vs. Quantity is what we rather have, and so far is "bullseye".

Scooter

Well thanks all! Brought title relevancy up from 50% yesterday to 76% today. Will have it at 100% before you know it....I hope :-) I can't thank you enough for all the info!

Hey Cheryl,
I would suggest that you post asking for feedback and general suggestions on seo and ranking for key terms related to your site. If you are open to it, I am sure you'll get a laundry list of suggestions that will help - well beyond the homepage title relevance.

I realize that this was not your original question, but thought it might be helpful for me to chime in here (for a moment).

Absolutely....I was working my way down the page. I would welcome any and all suggestions. At first I thought repeating keywords in many spots was what was best. The more I learn it seems that maybe less keywords, each geared toward the individual pages, category, and products. I can't imagine varying all the keywords for my many products an easy task tho. If it's a Claddagh pendant, ring or necklace a lot of the keywords would be similar. But I guess the first few should be ring, pendant, etc? And I was thinking that if I mentioned Irish gifts all over that when someone searched Irish gifts it would make me come up closer to the top? Right now I have been adding keywords and meta descriptions to the pages and categories. Then I will tackle the products.
Cheryl

BAD


GOOD and don't forget about using the keywords in your ALT Tags for your images.


Depending on your market... How do they search, are they looking for a GOLD Claddagh Pendant or a GOLD and RUBY Claddaugh Pendant, or an INEXPENSIVE Claddagh Pendant? It's very easy to "Vary" the keywords and target different markets, this is what you want to do because we aren't drones who all search the same, also take advantage of your RELATED PRODUCTS feature and make sure your category structure makes it easy to find that product they are looking for.


WRONG - Unless everyone of your pages were top notch and had different relevant information about "Irish Gifts", also see what I said above, I personally would never search for Irish Gifts, I might search for an "Emerald Irish Shamrock" My grandmother was from Ireland and loved anything Emerald. Point is, everyone searches differently, so you need think outside the box and capture as many markets as possible by targeting alternate search terms.


Sounds like a plan, and I bet it pays off for you as well. (IMG:http://forums.networksolutions.com/style_emoticons/default/happy.gif)

Thanks for the suggestions. And I have been really, really trying to think about what would someone put in to search for when they are looking for an item I'm selling. And you're right, that has been at the back of my mind....would many people even search for the broad term "Irish gifts". My two best selling products are Irish Santa hat and garden leprechaun. For reasons unbeknown to me they come up first when googled. It seems like a daunting task to go into each product and revise the keywords. I have way to many in there I think. Would it truly be better to put just a few (and what # would be a few) in that narrowly describes each. Should I just add the more descriptive ones to the beginning of what's there already? I really don't want to do anything that would negatively affect my ratings...such as having too many keywords. Are too many a determent? And these are just the product keywords. I really have to concentrate to on my category pages too I would think. I really appreciate your input..thanks!

Cheryl first I think you should read this.

Then I think you should visit this and do a search for Irish Gifts, be sure scroll to the bottom to the ADDITIONAL KEYWORDS TO CONSIDER. I think you'll find some very HIGH searches for some of the items you are selling, the more searches, typically the more sales you have to target, especially if your prices are competitive and your ranking is good. SEO is a huge topic and I try to help everyone that I can, you DO NOT need to spend thousands of dollars for someone to get you rankings. The internet is basically free and all the information is out there for you to succeed if you take the time to invest in yourself. PM me if you have any specific questions about your site.

One good way that I use to get an idea of which keywords to use is to make a list of the exact keyword terms I think I should use for each product. Similar products may even use the same keywords based upon their category but the item description can be different. I now go online and start searching. Use the big search engines, Google, Yahoo, Bing...

Now the research starts. Look at the top 3-5 ranked pages for those search terms you are testing. Go to their web pages and see how they have the keyword distributed on their pages. How many times it is listed. How close to the top of the page is the first one? Is it larger text, bold text, category description etc. Then take a look at their source code to see how they set up their tags and page descriptions. These are your competitors who are doing something right in the eyes of the search engines and you need to do the same thing that they are doing.

I started my testing by keeping a log of where my pages were currently ranked with the top search engines. In the beginning I would go through the first 20 pages of results (top 200 page ranks). As I made changes and improvements to each page I would follow along with the searches for that page about every 3-5 days once the page started showing up. There were times our page would jump to a better ranking, slip back a bit and then disappear altogether. In the beginning this is all good because as you are making changes to your pages through the correct tags and keyword placement you are also changing the content and search engines love it when pages change content.

Good luck.
Andy B

Thanks Andy,
I am anxious now to get through Christmas and spend more time implementing all these great ideas. It's a real challenge to me now :-) I'm pretty tied up with the 2 retail locations at the moment but have seen a real increase in orders over last year. And after Christmas I'll still have Paddy's Day coming up to target. I really appreciate all the great info you are all sharing.
Thanks!
Cheryl