Shopping Cart Meta Information

[cigarplace]

Hello, my shopping cart administrator allows me to enter Meta Information for: Keywords, Meta Description and a Custom Page Title.

I can enter this information for both my "Brand Pages"(page with several products that are in the same cigar brand) and my "Product Pages"(individual product page). But, my product pages only allows me to enter Meta Desc. and Meta Keywords.

My questions are:

1- Would this be the same type of work an SEO company would do?

2- Which one of the fields would I have a better result with? The Product Page or the Brand Pages?

3- Which meta field is the most important?

4- What recommendations can be offered for each meta field? What should Key Words should I use? How many? What kind of description? How Long? How should I word the Custom Page Title? etc.

As you can see, I am not very skilled at SEO. Any recommendations for a quick SEO newbie read?

Thanks.

[roban]

Your title tags will be the most important and then how well you use your key words and phrases within the body of the site. Google doesn't place much importance on meta tags anymore other than the title but Yahoo and MSN do so they are worth doing if for nothing more than a reminder to you.

If you know who your competitors are and what they are doing right, you're off to a good start. The more knowledge you have about your industry, the better off you are.

While SEO is not an exact science, it has its merits and an optimized site can draw more targeted visitors (with an emphasis on 'targeted') than one that has not been optimized.

At the very least it is a 6 month commitment on your part as well as whomever you hire to do SEO and 1 year would be my recommendation.

[JEccles]

Roban is right. But don't fall into the assumption that once the SEO is done, that's it. The algorithm's are constantly changing. What you optimize today may be obsolete tomorrow. So find a good source and keep updated on the latest trends.

[The Old Sarge]

The algorithm's are constantly changing. What you optimize today may be obsolete tomorrow.

Not to mention your competitors' Web sites and THEIR SEO ...

[PCIMerch]

Hi Cigarplace,

To answer your questions:

1- Would this be the same type of work an SEO company would do? - Some SEO companies would do this. However it is just a minor part of doing SEO.

2- Which one of the fields would I have a better result with? The Product Page or the Brand Pages? - The benefit is probably most gained on your brand pages as I'm assuming brands get searched more than individual products. So if you see improvements there you will probably get more traffic.

3- Which meta field is the most important? - Title is by far the most important part of the equation. Meta description is also pretty important as it serves like a mini-advertisement in your Google search results. When you see text under the link that many times is the Meta Description, so you want to put good text in there that will want to make people click through. I would not worry much about meta keywords. Used to be important, but I don't think it's weight is much if anything at all anymore.

4- What recommendations can be offered for each meta field? What should Key Words should I use? How many? What kind of description? How Long? How should I word the Custom Page Title? etc. - You want to use your main keywords in your title with something that makes people want to click. I'd try to keep under 10 words. For the description, again, try to use something with your keywords in there but that will also compel people to click.

Hope this helps!

[interspirepro]

META fields should be somewhat unique for every page and it is best practice to employ them, plus they're easy to set. Just do a little keyword research and come up with a list of the keywords you think you can rank at and will bring the most qualified traffic. I would also suggest doing a little homework on SEO - try seobook dot com.