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ross
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May 30, 2005, 9:34 AM
Post #2 of 8
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Re: [usadruglist] Search engine cannot find my web pages
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Hi there.
While I am not an expert on SEO, I have found that having meta titles and meta descriptions definitely helps search engines to find your pages. I have also seen many sites increase the numbers that they have in the filenames they want to be indexed (ex: article_000001.shtml instead of article_1.shtml).
Of course, if anyone else had any tips or tricks on how to improve search engine we would all be very interested  .
In this post I’ll go over how to add the meta title and description tags to each of your articles as well as have your articles start using more numbers in their names.
First, you'll need to create new database fields for keywords and descriptions. This can be done from in Setup Options in the Article Fields section. Select a couple unused fields, fill out their names appropriately, select textfield as their type, hit the enabled checkbox and hit the save button. Now, whenever you are in the Article Editor, these two fields will show up and let your writers add meta content for each article.
You'll probably want to create a few test articles with values in the new fields you just setup. That will give us some data to work with in the next step.
The next step will be to add placeholders to your article template so that each article reads the data from your two new fields. To do that, all you need to do is open up your article templates
(/templates/article/default.html) and add the following code to the head
section:
<meta name="keywords" content="$art_field7$">
<meta name="description" content="$art_field8$">
The only thing you may need to change is which field number is called. You'll need to match up the $art_field7$ and $art_field8$ with how you setup your database in the first step.
Once you add this to the template, you'll need to republish your articles but then that's it. You're done :).
And to have your articles use more numbers, open up the article.dat file in your data folder. The first two lines should look something like this:
The #0 tells Article Manager what the last article number used was. In my example, the last article was number zero, so the next one will be number 1. If you change yours to:
#!C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe
#111111
The next article will be come 111112. Just remember to save an re-upload the file and your are done.
Does this all make sense? Could you give it a shot and let me know how you make out?
-----------------------------------------------------------
Cheers,
Ross Fairbairn - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com
Hire me!
Save time by getting our experts to help with your project. Template changes, advanced features, full integration, whatever you need. Whether you need one hour or fifty, get it done fast with Priority Consulting.
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usadruglist
User
May 30, 2005, 10:58 AM
Post #3 of 8
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Re: [ross] Search engine cannot find my web pages
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Hi, Ross,
Thanks vor your reply. I have modified my setting according to your instruction. But I found I have this line just below my <title> </title>
<meta name="generator" content="">
My question is:
How to erase this line ?
Thanks in advance !
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ross
Staff
/ Moderator
May 30, 2005, 1:13 PM
Post #4 of 8
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Re: [usadruglist] Search engine cannot find my web pages
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Hi again .
Thanks for the update!
Is this empty meta tag an extra one in addition to the two that actually work? Or are you only getting blank meta tags?
If you are getting blank tags, the first thing I would check is which article fields you are using. My example assumed you would use art_field7 and art_field8. If you had gone with alternate fields, there’s no problem; you’ll just need to update the templates so that they reflect the changes.
Does that seem like it would get you going again? If you like, I could take a closer look for you, all I would need is a support request:
https://www.interactivetools.com/support/email_support.cgi
I look forward to hearing from you .
-----------------------------------------------------------
Cheers,
Ross Fairbairn - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com
Hire me!
Save time by getting our experts to help with your project. Template changes, advanced features, full integration, whatever you need. Whether you need one hour or fifty, get it done fast with Priority Consulting.
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usadruglist
User
May 31, 2005, 10:26 PM
Post #5 of 8
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Re: [ross] Search engine cannot find my web pages
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Hi, Ross
According to your instruction, I have successfully deleted the line.
I have put the category links into some static pages. Let's see whether Search engines will find my pages.
Thanks very much !
usadruglist.info
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alpine
User
Jun 4, 2005, 1:42 AM
Post #6 of 8
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Re: [usadruglist] Search engine cannot find my web pages
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Article Manager has no effect on whether these pages are being found or not.
In the two cases cited (Yahoo and MSN) Yahoo is notoriously slow in updating its search results - MSN somewhat better lately. To get slurp (the Yahoo spider) on your site, your best bet is to get a link from a page which is already spidered frequently by Yahoo - in other words, a well-ranking page in the engine or the Yahoo directory.
But patience also helps.
To respond to some of Ross's points, yes, in general it is good to have individual page titles and descriptions (descriptions have lately been reintroduced by Google in some cases).
But in the case of this particular market it is like using a peashooter in a war. As usadruglist is probably well aware, prescription drugs is one of the most competitive sectors for content and advertising and the rewards are proportionately high. Many of the competitors for ranking or advertising income are professional SEOs or hire professional SEOs - the usage of more "creative" ways of ranking is also high in this area. So, while I wish you luck with the site, I would not hold my breath if you know little about SEO to begin with.
With regard to the page-naming, I have never seen any evidence that increasing the start point of incremental numbers has any effect on search engines. (It may have some particular effect with Google News, but I am not up-to-date with how that works.)
As far as AM and search engines go, the two changes I would immediately make "out of the box" would be to switch to a CSS-P template and to use custom filenames for articles. These, however, are personal preferences and there are plenty of sites that also rank well using tables and with traditional filenames.
After that, it is a question of normal SEO (page titles, link text, link quantity and quality, thematic context, etc.).
_____
Steve
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MikeB
Staff
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Jun 4, 2005, 11:10 AM
Post #7 of 8
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Re: [alpine] Search engine cannot find my web pages
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Hi Steve,
Thanks for posting!
Thanks for your input on the issue of SEO and some ways to potentially improve this within Article Manager's template files.
I'm sure anyone who is curious will find your post very helpful.
Thanks again for the details and if you or anyone else has any other SEO tips feel free to keep us updated!
Cheers,
Mike Briggs - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com
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Dawna
Novice
Jun 1, 2008, 10:53 PM
Post #8 of 8
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Re: [ross] Search engine cannot find my web pages
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You have saved my bacon. Thank you for this post.
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