Google helps you to correct your description Meta tags and Title advice analysis

Google helps you to correct your description Metatags

If you read the post about Matt Cutss and Meta Description Tags�and looked at the video, you now that Google does use these terms for their Index.

Wel, they just made that more clear than ever…. giving you a big help on improving your site for their results pages!

Just login to Webmaster central en check your website diagnostics, and then “content analysis”

You will see a new screen that give you a lot of information about any problems that your site may encounter that way Google looks at the website:

google webmaster content analysis diagnostics overview screen

So you might find out about:

Title problems

Missing title tags
Duplicate title tags
Long title tags
Short title tags
Non Informative title tags (Are you using the standard “contact” page of Joomla, you will see just “contact”…

Meta description problems

Duplicate meta descriptions (real Joomla problem that easily be�fixed by NOT filling the Global Metatag function and filling every page tags�!)
Long meta descriptions
Short meta descriptions

Non-indexable content�

Flash ?

To find out what pages have problems click through the on the issue line:

google title tag problem report

The next screen will show if you click on the indicated link:

google title tag problem pages

For every issue reported, you can check the pages that should be corrected and work on a better ranking website.

And of course there are some helpful pages at Google about this tool:

What is the Content analysis page

After you have corrected all the errors and problems, this is what you would like to see…

6 responses so far ↓

1 Google lets you know about your SEO errors and gives advice for corrections // Dec 15, 2007 at 9:28 pm

[...] Google helps with Meta description and title errors [...]
2 Angela // Dec 27, 2007 at 8:43 pm

This is a helpful tool to the newbies of search engine optimization.
3 jim // Jan 7, 2008 at 3:48 pm

Hi - wondering if you could help? When you display a blog content category in Joomla it adds ALL the meta descriptions for every single article on the page together- thus creating a huge list. Is there any way of preventing Joomla from doing this?
4 Hummerbie // Jan 7, 2008 at 8:42 pm

@Jim

It looks like you used the standard metatag information in the Global settings.
This description is added with other metadescriptions.
First.. get ride of them, don’t use the Globals.
Just Cut them and save them for later use.

But you want good descriptions.
So the best solution is to use the SEF patch of Joomlatwork.com
Make sure you use the ones for your Joomla version!
The patch exists of some files wich you FTP over the extisting ones of the core Joomla files.

Please make a backup of your site before implementing this patch, its not hard to install and you probaly wont have any problems, but just make sure you can roll-back.
Especially if you use some extensions from Phil Taylor, because these sometimes overwrite the standard index.php with some special settings.

After you installed the patch, go throught the different menu itmens and add your Metatags (right bottom part of of your screen).
For your Home menu item you can now add the descriptions also in the new fields at the bottom.

Please check if this has the effects you want.
I don’t have any issues with my Joomla sites, but a always install this patch, and for my larger sites I get the paid version, becouse that gives me (among other things) a greater control over the HTML title tag.

You can check this on http://www.hummerbie.com/joomla-search-engine-optimization/ a new site I am building packed with all my knowledge… which I hope is enough to start with.

if everything works out please leave a new comment here.
5 Hummerbie // Jan 7, 2008 at 8:44 pm

Oké, looks like I have to write this comment into an article I guess…
6 jim // Jan 8, 2008 at 11:11 am

Thanks Hummerbie - I’m using Artio JoomSEF which has been customised for use with a customised version of JEvents so I can’t use another one. I get the idea with the globals, even when those are removed then in a blog content category view you get all the metatags from all the articles in that category added together. Probably going to have to pay someone to fix.

Thanks for your help