Meta Tags

1. 87

   WorkAtHomeMumsposted 12 years ago

   When you view source code for a regular website, you can view their meta name="keywords".
   Where does the equivalent lie within a hub's source code?
   
   I've done a search and can see the meta name="description' which is our summary, but other than our title I can't see it.
   
   Anyone with the know how point me in the direction?

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   1. 88

      lobobrandonposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Meta tags aren't as prominent as they used to be. They were before I came online
      Earlier Google and other search engines used to use the keywords in the meta tags to rank the pages. But, people began gaming the system with false keywords and hence the algorithms changed. Some sites continue adding meta keywords; but, there's no point in doing so. That's the reason HP doesn't have them.

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      1. 87

         WorkAtHomeMumsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         But from a keyword perspective where does that all fit in? I thought they were key. If not what is key then? Surely not just title and description. Or are we talking the h1 h2? 
         I'm sure meta tags are important. Some seo companies swear by them.

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         1. 88

            lobobrandonposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            They aren't any more as far as I know. The keywords here are used in tags that lie in hidden code or something and search engines don't see it. The tags are just for HP. Keywords are used in your article it need not be only in the H1, H2 etc. They do weigh more if placed in the headings but they're used throughout the hub.

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         2. 69

            ankitharrytomposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Lobobrandon is right. Have a look at this
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK7IPbnmvVU

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            1. 87

               WorkAtHomeMumsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               Gee thanks for that link!! Much appreciated everyone

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2. 31

   Writer Foxposted 12 years ago

   It's true that HubPages is not using the keywords metatag in its coding, but it's NOT true that keywords are no longer important.  The keywords metatag is not used by Google to determine the ranking of a webpage on its search engine results.  What Google does use in ranking is the use of keywords in the content of your webpage, URL title, H1 and H2 headings.
   
   In my Hub,'What is SEO?', you will note that this keyword phrase is in the URL, and it is also used as an H1 and H2 tag:
   
   <h1>WHAT IS SEO?</h1>
   <h2 class="subtitle">WHAT IS SEO?</h2>
   
   Other H2 tags for this Hub are using related keyword phrases such as:
   
   <h2 class="subtitle">SEO TRENDS</h2>
   <h2 class="subtitle">SEO AND SEARCH ENGINES </h2><
   <h2 class="subtitle">SEO Video: How the Google Search Engine Works</h2>
   
   HubPages creates the H1 tag using the title you have written for your Hub.  HubPages only allows one H1 tag per Hub.  The H2 tags are generated from titles to text boxes, videos, etc.
   
   Another important meta tag used by HubPages is the alt image tag.  In my Hub, for example, the first three alt tags are:
   
   alt="What Is SEO?"
   alt="SEO Searches"
   alt="Organic Search Results"
   
   The alt image tag is generated from the description you write for your image, not the title.
   
   HubPages tags are important because they are used for the internal search box on HubPages and might also be used to display 'related Hubs' on Hubs written by other Hubbers.  It is not entirely correct to say that Google takes no notice of these keywords/tags.  As used on HubPages, the tags are part of the webpage and not the source code.  Every word on a webpage is noted by Google and is included as a factor in Google rankings. 
   
   A comprehensive discussion about Meta Tags can be found in my 'What is SEO?' Hub.

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   1. 87

      WorkAtHomeMumsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for this detail

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3. 78

   Greekgeekposted 12 years ago

   The META keywords tag is dead, dead dead. It has been for years.
   
   Google hasn't used it as a ranking signal in about a decade -- they've said so.
   
   Yahoo clung to it longer than almost any search engine (and Bing, partly based on Yahoo), but even it gave up on the META keywords tag in 2009.
   
   About the only search engine that still looks at the META keyword tag at all is Bing -- and it's only using it as an easy way to detect spammers stuffing the tag! So if you stuff the tag, Bing could penalize your page; otherwise it might as well not exist.
   
   Any SEOs who still insist that the META keywords tag is important should be avoided, as they clearly haven't kept up with any changes in the search engine industry in almost a decade, and some of their advice may actually be harmful. Tricks that worked a decade ago are now used by search engines as a warning signal for spam and poor-quality content, since those tricks -- like overstuffing the keyword tag -- have been abused by black hat SEOs for too long.
   
   
   
   What WriterFox is talking about -- keywords in the more general sense -- should NOT be confused with the META keywords tag.
   
   At the dawn of the web, we used the META keywords tag to tell search engines, "hey, these are the search phrases and topics our page is relevant for!" Then everyone started posting junk content and trying to pretend their pages were relevant for search phrases (keywords) they didn't cover very well at all. That practice made the META keywords tag worse than useless to search engines.
   
   So, Google and other search engines use an algorithm to examine our webpages' content -- ALL of it -- and decide for themselves what the "key words" are on the page. They look at things like the headers, subheaders, link text, image captions and filenames. They look at links pointing to our pages, too, although those have been so abused by link spammers that many links no longer count as "backlinks." In the past few years, search engines have gotten a lot more sophisticated about looking for clusters of related words, synonyms, etc. (Insert my riff on semantic SEO). They are also beginning to use social signals like Tweets and Google Plus shares very cautiously to decide how good a page is, although there's enough self-promotion spam in social media that these signals are treated with caution.
   
   The important thing to understand about "keywords" is that Google is not going to take our word for it that X and Y are our page's keywords. It may or may not pay any attention to our tags. It uses its own sophisticated analysis of our content to decide what keywords -- search phrases -- our content is relevant for. Every search engine has its own in-house algorithm for analyzing our content and links to our content to determine that.

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   1. 87

      WorkAtHomeMumsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Many thanks for your detailed reply.

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