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But title and description tags do matter. Most search engines use them as you wrote them to create listing for your page. Some do not consider them in ranking page.
Think of title as headline of an ad that draws attention to ad copy. And think of description as ad copy that compels reader to click to your site. And above all, be certain a visitor who clicks on your listing finds what was expected on page.
Back To Keywords
You may be able to do some tweaking of your pages relative to keywords. Since keyword set evolved along with your definition of your ideal customer and features, then benefits of your product, chances are some of these keywords are included on some pages. Or a minor change can bring this about.
Suppose you are working with a page upon which "fly fishing" occurs five times as an integral part of pitch. While this is not sufficient repetition for a top position on any search engine, page may rank reasonably well.
You can improve chance of a higher ranking by including phrase in your title tag and meta description tag, as close to beginning of each statement as possible. Remember title is ad headline and description is ad copy; be sure rewriting does not weaken ad. And while it may be ignored, include it first in keyword tag as well.
Try To Add Keywords To The Page
Suppose you have following sentence on page: "The secret to fly fishing is rod."
Consider adding "fly" so that it now reads, "The secret to fly fishing is fly rod."
Adding this word does not help pitch. But so long as it does not detract from it, we're good. If "fly rod" now occurs four times on page, add it to meta keyword tag. And it may be possible to slip it into description some way, but avoid forcing it. The title and description must bring a click. It's easy to clutter them up to point where they don't do job.
Other Things
If you are using heading tages, it helps if keywords for page are included in them as close to beginning of each as possible. Some have reported good success with including them in ALT tags.
While there is only a small bit of fine tuning that can be done with a well designed site, it's worth effort to do so. For even a small gain can improve ranking substantially.
What Matters Most
The performance of site is key. Rankings on search engines is way down on priority list compared to site performance.
Only when site is up and doing job, is it appropriate to consider generating more hits. As suggested, content pages work. And there are those who can generate hits for you. Advertising works, but takes some time to master. Link swaps are very effective, and often overlooked.
There is literally no end to what can be done to generate more hits. But until site performance is maximized, more hits mean next to nothing.
Bob McElwain Want to build a winning site? Improve one you already have? Fix one that's busted? Get ANSWERS. Subscribe to "STAT News" now! mailto:join-stat@lyris.dundee.net Web marketing and consulting since 1993 Site: Phone: 209-742-6349