meta names/keywords

[Forum admin]

I see we had 144 online in a 60 minute period today, which is absolutely gross.

[Baron von Lotsov]

Yes and no.

Because 21 of the 34 current online are all from the same spoofed Dutch IP range trying to post links to porn and the like.

Very interesting. The web is a jungle. Mind you I specifically recall the forum was mentioning one unregistered viewer on average when this thread had started, so that's still a 1300% increase. I've seen a fair few forums like this die, so it was important to make Google think something is going on here.

[papasmurf]

So today we see a new world record of 75 users on line. Clearly the traffic has gone right up since starting this thread. It's working.

Stick Building 31 and C9H18O6 into the mix and there will be a lot more.

[Forum admin]

Yes and no.

Because 21 of the 34 current online are all from the same spoofed Dutch IP range trying to post links to porn and the like.

[Baron von Lotsov]

So today we see a new world record of 75 users on line. Clearly the traffic has gone right up since starting this thread. It's working.

[Baron von Lotsov]

Great stuff. I think the meta name keywords itself is redundant with Google. It was the main way of identifying sites in the beginning, but as you say the engines are far more intelligent now and look at the whole page. After all, that's what the user is going to see. It's the title though that gets the main attention of it, i.e. statistically weighted to match the title over the text in the page. The AI has a spam detector in it which will knock your ranking back if deliberate attempts are made to try and fool it, e.g. a common one used by newspapers is a lot of repetition of a phrase. The other big factor it takes into account is the number and quality of the backlinks. For example, if there is a high traffic site which has a directory of political forums on it, then if you get their permission to be listed, that would make Google think it is trusted. Other than that, like any business out their punting its wares, it can take off if it is good. Content is everything. High quality content makes all the difference. It's looking quite good so far.

[Forum admin]

I registered the site with multiple search engines on the day after I set it up. I intend to add more keywords to the Meta files as soon as I am able. Google and other engines do read meta tags and files, but have a superior AI approach and read and index the whole site.

You may have noticed bots already on the forum, which is a good sign.

[Baron von Lotsov]

Yes, there is a bit of an art to this whole business. First of all you can register the site with search engines to tell them you are here so they will send people to you. I've got a page here which explains how to register with Google. That's the main one, so best to get that done first. You have to create a Google account to do it, but it's free and simple.



https://www.ionos.co.uk/digitalguide/websites/website-creation/registering-a-website-submitting-urls-to-google/">https://www.ionos.co.uk/digitalguide/we ... to-google/">https://www.ionos.co.uk/digitalguide/websites/website-creation/registering-a-website-submitting-urls-to-google/



Next point, what does Google understand on a webpage. I found a page from Google which tells you explicitly.



https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/79812?hl=en">https://support.google.com/webmasters/a ... 9812?hl=en">https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/79812?hl=en



Also according to one site they say the meta name keywords is redundant with Google and it works out what the page is by the page's title.



The home page title in your case is

<title>Political forums home</title>

The index page is

<title>(2) Political Forums - Index page</title>

then for example the thread entitled Corbyn by the user comes out as

<title>(2) Corbyn - Political Forums</title>



There are also some analytics you can do to see who searches for what when they click on the site and how many bounce off it when they realise it was not the page they wanted. Alexa does this sort of thing, but it's a matter of what info is provided for free and what you have to pay for. Here's some analytics on Google's search engine relating to your site called a Crawl Stats report.



https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35253?hl=en&ref_topic=9427949">https://support.google.com/webmasters/a ... ic=9427949">https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35253?hl=en&ref_topic=9427949



I'll see what else I can find in due course, but I'd get the site registered with the top search engines. Don't bother with the minor ones, as it is mostly Google these days and Bing and Yahoo are also quite big.

[Forum admin]

Thank you for your very enlightening post. I'm not sure how to check each potential word to show how much web traffic is associated with it. If you can do this for me, I can then put the best words in the website front page and we should see an increase in members. I have no idea how SEO works, so perhaps you could point me to a lesson on YouTube on the best forum setup keywords. Do you have experience of authoring websites, or were you viewing the page source HTML for some other reason?

I'm really sorry to have missed out on the correct keywords. I set up the site following a request from 3 members of this forum and I did it all in a bit of a hurry. There are some things that need tweaking, but, I am sure, with your help and guidance it will be improved and honed to perfection.

Thanks again for your very welcome interest and input. As a beginning which words do you think would increase traffic to this site?

[Baron von Lotsov]

Two pieces of metadata in a webpage help search engines identify which page is good for someone searching for something. They determine who turns up and hence who might become a member.



Lets look at the last forum first:



<meta name="keywords" content="political, Politics, politic, forum, blog, Civil Rights, Censorship, Culture, abortion, gun control, democrat, republican, liberals, politics forum, politics forums, political debate, debate forum" />

<meta name="description" content="Political forum and politics discussion of UK's and worldwide politics, cultural and social issues." />



And this is this one as it stands:



<meta name="description" content="UK political forum discussion" />

<meta name="keywords" content="UK political forum discussion" />



To increase the readership one can check each potential word to show how much web traffic is associated with it. The rest comes down to a matter of personal choice. Looking at the words of the previous forum it is clearly pulling in the Americans. Even civil rights is an American term. Because in the past most people on the internet were American, such keyword attract a lot of people. Mind you, its a matter of whether you want thousands of people ranting on about Trump or Bush ad infinitum. I thought i would bring it to the wider attention of the forum, if that's OK to do so. Perhaps the admin might like to take suggestions. In my view we would benefit from a few more keywords to get this place rocking.