Placing meta tags in the header
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Dear WordPress bloggers,
I have been searching WordPress high and low trying to find out how to add generic meta tags to my site. I’ve found the relevant page, http://codex.wordpress.org/Meta_Tags_in_WordPress. It states that generic meta tags are to be added to your header but I’m unclear as to how to access my header it. I’ve put the tags in what I thought was my header, but after I saved it the tags disappeared from the page.
If anyone could shed some light on this I would greatly appreciate it.
Tagged out,
Amber
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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We cannot begin to answer technical questions without a link to your blog, Please either paste it here, starting with http, or link your name to your blog by putting the URL on your Profile, under “website”.
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Thank you. A few things:
1) metatags are considered outdated and search engines now ignore them.
2) those instructions are for independently-hosted blogs; they do not apply to blogs at WordPress.COM at all.
3) most importantly, pretty much everything you need to do to help your SEO has been built in by WordPress.com. I teach blogging, and the only thing I’ve seen that has more out-of-the-box SEO than WordPress.com is WordPress.com VIP. Everything that can be built into your blog to optimize it for search engines has already been built in. Just start blogging!
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Oh, and we don’t have access to the underlying files here anyway, so you couldn’t add them even if they’d do you some good.
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That was all very helpful information, raincoaster. But if everything I need to help my SEO is already built into WordPress, why is my website nowhere to be found in a Google search? In other words, there are no keywords attached to my site. Also, what about the instructions on the same site I listed above, that says you can add meta tags to your tagline and WordPress will add them to your SEO?
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Actually, it does. You’re not blogging; you’re website-building. Here are the details:
You have no posts. None. You have only static pages. That is not a blog; that is a website, and it has virtually no Googlejuice
You need to write posts, and use appropriate tags, categories, and keywords, which will be picked up by Google. The more frequently you blog, the better you will do in searches. Static pages will not help you.
Keywords explained:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/need-to-add-keywords-to-my-blog?replies=27#post-243146 -
Also:
2) those instructions are for independently-hosted blogs; they do not apply to blogs at WordPress.COM at all.There are two different kinds of WordPress; familiarize yourself with the differences by reading the sticky threads at the top of the forums.
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Using pages for your content has major drawbacks you should be aware of:
1. Pages will show up lower in search engine results because search engines place lower emphasis on pages. Pages are meant for static content.
2. When you publish a post, wordpress automatically “pings” all the major search engines to let them know you have published a new post so that they can index it. When you publish a page, wordpress does NOT “ping” the search engines. You will have to ping manually at a service such as pingomatic.com each and every time you publish a new page.
3. Only posts show up on an RSS feed, pages do not.
4. You can assign categories and tags to posts to help the search engines properly place you in search results. Pages cannot have tags or categories as they sit outside the blog structure.
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You two are a wealth of information. One more thing. My blog was created as a business site, I’m not interested in having people leave comments and the like. So if I add posts to my site will they appear on my site? When I add tags to them and they are searchable on Google, for example, when people click on the links will they be taken to the individual posts or to my homepage?
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i am bloody fuming i have been looking to add meta tags for a month now thinking that i was a retard my yahoo blog opens up in a window to paste my meta tags on my wordpress blog which means i have to double click on it every time i log on .what the hell is going on ..i bet i know big brother job you can stick ya wordpress blog where the sun don,t shine ps it also told me it had sent me an email to activate it did not.. shove it from stugod
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@stugod: When you’re done fuming and cursing, try to read what raincoaster already wrote.
“Everything you need to do to help your SEO has been built in by WordPress.com.”
Metatags are practically obsolete: best thing for search engines is a sitemap, and in wp.com blogs the sitemap is automatically created for you.
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Thank you both for your input. panaghiotisadam, I don’t know if raincoaster or thesacredpath will be back to answer my above questions. Do you know the answers to them?
Cheers
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If you add posts to the blog, of course they’ll be visible. If you disable comments on the Settings->Discussion page, nobody will be able to leave comments. As for how the blog functions on Google, well that’s up to Google and sadly they have been really messing with their listings lately and things don’t work as simply as they should, nor does the way they work remain static, so we can’t really answer Google questions.
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Hi,
With due respect I’m going to take issue with raincoaster about the obsolescence of meta content as well as their lack of utility. I am not looking to enter into a religious war here, but I don’t think these comments should be left uncontested.
There are two meta tags that are important. And, one of them is not, strictly a meta tag, but gets lumped into this category so I’m going to reference it.
First, the page title is very important. This is the piece of code that looks like this in your source code: <title> Fort Sheridan Golf Course Lake County Illinois</title>. As I said, this is not strictly a meta tag. But it is important for two reasons. The page title is the text that the search engines *always* use to link to your website page. So what this tag reads can be very important in driving a conversion to your site. Second, my experience tells me that the keywords in this tag can be very important to gain search prominence for those keywords. And, if you don’t believe me, perhaps this article on the Top 5 Ranking Factors from seomoz.com will reinforce my comments: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors.
And the reason I bring this up is because I do not seem to be able to manage this page title on a post by post basis for WordPress hosted blogs. I also manage a self-hosted WordPress blog and we have acquired an “SEO plug-in” that does permit me to manage the Page Title separate from the Post Title.
The second meta tag is the meta description tag. Although of lesser importance in influencing search engines, I do find that a keyword rich description does, indeed contribute to gaining prominence. However, perhaps even more important, the meta description tag is often picked up by the search engines as the unlinked descriptive text that appears below the page link on the search engine results page. This description can contribute to drive conversions by reassuring the searcher that the content they seek might be on this page. And, again, a WordPress hosted blog does not permit control of this meta tag on a post by post basis.
Regards,
Sonny
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bobolink,
FYI, the ‘Excerpt’ box below the post in the post editor serves as a ‘meta description’ tag, and I’ve successfully used it on several of my wordpress.com blogs. http://codex.wordpress.org/Excerpt -
To claim your blog for Google sidewiki you need to add a meta tag or upload a particular file with a very specific name. If you are hosting your blog on wordpress it appears impossible to do.
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It is. The old method no longer works, thanks to changes by Google. No word on the new method.
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