Part Three

What is a general rule of thumb when filling in title tags and metadata and does it need to be different on every page?

Title tags are far more important than meta tags nowadays, but filling out both is part of a good comprehensive effort. It also helps the search engine display the best results. Yahoo always uses the meta description tag, but Google tends to use the title tag, sometimes the meta tag and even top text from the home page depending on what its algorithm deems the most accurate info.

Title tags have to be different on every page and should be no more than 70 characters. Tailor them to the content of the given page. Use keywords people actually search for based on your volume research. I usually write the tags myself (that’s what the clients pay me for) and then send them over for quick approval in a spreadsheet or email, depending on the number of pages.

How can we get the description listed on Google to not be the DMOZ entry?

Change the title tags and meta description tag and it should be re-indexed and changed in a matter of days. DMOZ used to be the backbone of Google’s index, and getting listed in it was HUGE. But that has changed. DMOZ is human edited, and it can take months and months to get into it – if you get into it at all. The community has shied away from it in favor of Wikipedia, etc. and now the updates take even longer. You should be advised, with confidence, that it is not something you should be wasting a lot of time and effort on.

What is Page Rank and does it make any difference to my search result rankings?

If you have a Google Page Rank of 7/10 then you are WAY above average. Although this doesn’t guarantee traffic, it tells us the site is well established, indexed frequently and that changes made to the site in the best interests of SEO will take effect quickly (think 2 weeks as opposed to 2 months). In terms of SEO, it is important to set realistic expectations for yourself or your clients. You can do everything right in terms of SEO but it is still ultimately up to the extremely objective search engine algorithms to decide who gets ranked for what words. Figure out what keywords you need to rank well for. Then find out if these keywords have any volume (does anyone actually search using them). Shorten the list to include only relevant words that have significant search volume.