Seo and individual meta tags and headings

videohard · 2011-03-05 01:58:00

I'm a professional SEO, here's some advice for future features:

1. Meta descriptions: there are many reasons why a webmaster could want a different meta description for and individual page instead of the one that is automatically built right now (even if that's editable). Add a field in the video edit and category edit pages in control panel to add a unique meta description. If the field is left empty, the regular method will be used.
Same thing for the "browser" title but only for categories. I may want to name a category "Amateur" but use a more complex broswer title.

2. Meta keywords: get rid of them. They're not used by search engines to rank websites anymore BUT they can be used to penalize them. They do more harm than good.

3. Avoid use of Headings (H2,H3,H4) for css styling or for the website logo. Headings should always containg information that is strictly related to the individual page content. Also they should be in sequence, if there's no H1, there shouldn't be an H2, H3 and so on. Example: category pages have no H1 while it should contain the category name, H2 is used for the logo while it shouldn't, there is no H3 and H4 is used for the category name.

I don't mean to sound too critic, best script I've tested so far, my 2 cents.

Last edited by videohard (2011-03-05 01:59:06)

symtab · 2011-03-05 10:21:24

First of all your critic is constructive and its more than welcome. I'm not a expert SEO so i didnt know about this and except for 2 i'm considering to implement what you said. What should i use instead of H1, H2, H3, H4? (can you please explain this).

symtab · 2011-03-05 10:54:00

Hmm....so basically the following should be added:

* each video should have its individual meta_title, meta_desc and meta_keys as fields in admin
* each video category should have its own meta_title, meta_desc and meta_keys
* same for other media (photos), forum and so on

How about multi-language? Should this be editable through a multi-language system? (the admin editing for the end-use will be very complex).

videohard · 2011-03-05 13:20:12

Hi,

thanks for the reply.

Headings:
the most important thing whould be using H1 for the page title, so for video page H1 would contain the video title, for category pages the category name, for the models page the model name. Currently they're in H4.
Applying H2,H3,H4 in a video site isn't easy because the content is mainly videos, not text. Good thing is that you can avoid to used them, it's not necessary.

The model pages have more text so for example, for Sasha Grey's page: H1 for "Sasha Grey", H2 for "Sasha Grey Description" (not the description text itself) and H3 for "Sasha Grey Biography". You could also use H2 for both "Sasha Grey Description" and "Sasha Grey Biography" if you think the content is equally important.

Meta:
Yes, having custom field for metas for each page would be great. BUT PLEASE, leave the current automated system in place if those fields are left empty otherwise a webmaster would be forced to edit thousands of entries.
For example on my site I want personalized meta desc and title for category pages but automated metas for the videos. Having to manually edit 10.000 videos would force me not to use the script.

Didn't think about multi-language sites... ideally yes, it would require an admin multi language system. Maybe it will be a little complex but I think a webmaster that can handle a "real" multi-langua site can handle that.

symtab · 2011-03-05 16:07:06

Hi,

Thanks for your input. I will check each template and add the right headings. Probably will need to change some css also, but this will be important for SEO. Also for meta things i can do exxactly what we discussed. Any other ideas for better SEO?

videohard · 2011-03-05 17:06:12

Hi,
yes... another thing that worries me it's the "title" tag in links (only visible in code).
For example the "title" tag for links in the category page is *category name* Porn Video Category. "Porn Video Category" is hardcoded in categories.tpl.php

This can lead to 2 problems:
1. If my site is not in english, the sentence in the title will not add value to my SEO... why mix 2 languages?
2. This might be a bigger problem. Porn website are known for having very little textual content (mainly videos and photos). All sites made with ASP are porn websites so we can assume many categories will be named the same (amateur, anal, etc). Let's say in a year you'll have sold 1 million copies of ASP - let's hope - there will be a million websites with few content and very similar code.
Remember that the link title tag is considered content (not code) by search engines. In fact the link title tag is also used for accessiblity for blind users. This means that a million website will have mostly identical pages... for example the CATEGORIES page: few text, identical categories, identical urls, identical title tags (Porn Video Category will be in every site). Also "Porn Video Category" will be repeated for each category, if you have 40 categories, 40 repetitions... search engines might interpret that like an over-optimization attempt.

While this is not an incredibly bad thing, I'm pretty sure it's not a good thing and not definitely not a good "quality" signal.

So we could eliminate "Porn Video Category" in the title tags and leave the category name only. But this leads to another issue: the title attribute in links should be used to give ADDITIONAL info to links. Why repeat the same info then?

I would eliminate the link title attribute for all these links (thats what I'll do on my sites), EXCEPT for the ones in the menus since they're customizable and the link title attribute will be uinque AND different to the menu name, example: Link Text: "Models" Link Title: "Browse our Porn Actresses Database". <--Good title attribute

The exact same reasoning should be used for the Title attributes ALT attributes for videos links in categories pages.
Example: the video "Sasha Grey Lesbian Experience" will have:

Anchor Text: Sasha Grey Lesbian Experience
Link title attribute: Sasha Grey Lesbian Experience
Image alt attribiute: Sasha Grey Lesbian Experience
URL: /121/sasha-grey-lesbian-experience

That really looks as an over-optimization attempt to me. URL and anchor text is fine but in my experience if you don't have a real "alternative" text for the other attributes it's better to not use them at all. I'm not suggesting to have additional inputs fields for these attributes like for metas, it would be overly complicated and also unrealistic to have to edit them for each video. On my sites I will just eliminate the title and Alt attributes for these links.

Generally speaking in seo terms, if something is not adding anything relevant to the content and it's just a repetition, it won't bring SEO value to the site. Doing it will increase the risk of mediocre rankings or over-optimization penalties.

Sorry for being long, I thought it was better to describe why I would do certain things than just saying what to do.

Thanks for your time.

symtab · 2011-03-05 17:36:18

Ok. Will take all the information in consideration when i'll start working on the SEO part (probably Monday). I have a few questions:

- the hardcoded Porn Video Category is actually a bug (i forgot to translate that part), how about i translate it so that everyone can have their own text there?
- after removing the alt attribute from img, the site will not avalidate

Thanks for helping. I will make the required changes. I think SEO is a very important part of the site, we have the tools for content and advertising, so what our clients need are visitors.

videohard · 2011-03-05 17:47:14

Yes, the translation of "Porn video category" would be ok as long as I could leave it empty and not have any text there...

I know that removing ALT tags unfortunately breaks validation but keep in mind that Google itself has said that validation is not a ranking factor.

Just to prove what I just said:
Google.com doesn't validate, and not worried about it .http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0&user-agent=W3C_Validator%2F1.2

SeoMoz guys don't care: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http% … ator%2F1.2

and the New York Times neither: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http% … ator%2F1.2

Most my sites don't validate and I couldn't care less but I understand it's hard to convince scripts potential buyers that validation isn't worth it.

Pierre · 2011-03-05 17:57:46

I was reading this post about SEO and ASP and I remembered a problem I had with google not indexing thousands of long "optimized" urls from a site of mine.
I think there should be an option in ASP to automatically keep a page url to a maximum length of characters independent of Title Max Length option.

symtab · 2011-03-05 23:04:06

Yes you are right. I already thaught about this, so i changed the code in video view page to actually not take the slug (/video-title-here/) into consideration. I can also modify the code when creating the slug to limit to a x number of characters (actually if the characters > x then cut the last words to match (or less) x).

Pierre · 2011-03-06 00:40:10

Yes, in my opinion there should be an option to turn off SEO optimized urls altogether and a max url length option.
If the SEO optimized url option is turned on, the maximum url length option should apply when generating urls automatically via some mass import function or when users upload their content. if admin decides to adjust or create urls longer than that manually when uploading or editing content he should be able to, like with a checkbox button reading: "ignore maximum url length".

symtab · 2011-03-06 10:26:37

I cannot turn off the SEF urls, the urls would look something like index.php?q=module/component/subcomponent&page=2&action=delete and i would have to modify the entire script to work with SEF urls turned off. I can add the max length feature though.

Pierre · 2011-03-06 19:34:16

Ok, don't worry about turning SEO off, the max url length feature will serve almost the same purpose, that is to make the url shorter.

symtab · 2011-03-10 10:21:00

Working on both features, implementing separate meta title/desc/keys and limiting the sef urls. Both features can be enabled/disabled from the administration panel.

symtab · 2011-03-10 12:44:12

The individual meta tags thing, might cause some parts of the script to be slower, so i will need debug and see how i can make it faster.

symtab · 2011-03-10 12:44:39

Does this really need to work with multi-language?

symtab · 2011-03-10 13:01:37

What is a good limit for the url length?

Pierre · 2011-03-10 17:44:44

A maximum of 255 is more than enough.
It should be by default set to the maximum and let admin choose how to adjust it for his particular case.

Pierre · 2011-03-10 17:50:40

the meta desc and keywords per page should work with multi languages. the url not, cause of the legal characters allowed in url.

symtab · 2011-03-16 08:05:29

The SLUG limit function is finished (its set by default at 99, 255 is a hard coded limit, and with 255 characters the url is already to big). You can change this setting at any point from the administration panel. It is enforced when videos are added (doesnt matter with which method), and not when the videos are displayed. Working on the SEO category thing now.

symtab · 2011-03-21 07:21:22

I spent a few days trying to figure out how to implement the category meta seo feature, which i personally think its important (as the category description gets me visitors on my site, the more seo the better), however its not so easy to do. I've come to the conclusion, that its easier to actually have a language file for this, is very easy, however each user will have to add his own translation after he adds a category.
If there is no translation for each category (meta title, meta desc, meta keys, box title), the current system will be used (automated title building). What do you think about this?

symtab · 2011-03-21 07:38:59

It is very easy to implement to work only with en-US, though.

Coscast · 2011-03-21 08:22:31

For me, it's enough

symtab · 2011-03-21 09:20:47

Ok. I'll add for en-US only then and then later for the rest of the languages.

symtab · 2011-03-23 11:00:38

Ok. So all three features are implemented and testing: slug limit, category meta separate (box title, meta_title, meta_desc and meta keys, only for the current language) and video separate meta (meta_title, meta_keys, meta_desc). I will now change the template to not use h4 and make sure it uses the headings in correct order. Once finished (probably in 1-2 days, a lot of files need to be edited) i will upload latest version to scriptdevel.com so you can test.

If you have any last additions (please only small important features or bug fixes) just let me know and i'll add them. This is the last BETA version :-) Next is stable, so no more features until 1.1.0.

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#1 2011-03-05 01:58:00

Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#2 2011-03-05 10:21:24

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#3 2011-03-05 10:54:00

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#4 2011-03-05 13:20:12

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#5 2011-03-05 16:07:06

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#6 2011-03-05 17:06:12

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#7 2011-03-05 17:36:18

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#8 2011-03-05 17:47:14

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#9 2011-03-05 17:57:46

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#10 2011-03-05 23:04:06

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#11 2011-03-06 00:40:10

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#12 2011-03-06 10:26:37

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#13 2011-03-06 19:34:16

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#14 2011-03-10 10:21:00

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#15 2011-03-10 12:44:12

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#16 2011-03-10 12:44:39

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#17 2011-03-10 13:01:37

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#18 2011-03-10 17:44:44

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#19 2011-03-10 17:50:40

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#20 2011-03-16 08:05:29

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#21 2011-03-21 07:21:22

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#22 2011-03-21 07:38:59

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#23 2011-03-21 08:22:31

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

#24 2011-03-21 09:20:47

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#25 2011-03-23 11:00:38

Re: Seo and individual meta tags and headings

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