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Old 11-12-2003, 06:15 PM
DylanW DylanW is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Lenoir City, TN
Posts: 18
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Definitely drop these tags. This is what's commonly called "keyword stuffing"--repeating keywords in unnecessary tags that won't ever be displayed to the user. This can hurt you.
Code:
<meta NAME="VW96.objecttype" CONTENT="candy bouquets, gift baskets,
chocolate gifts, candy baskets, corporate gift baskets, gourmet gifts, candy
gifts, baby gift baskets, edible gifts, custom gift baskets, office gifts,
christmas gifts, chocolate bouquet, sugar free chocolate, gifts">
<meta NAME="DC.Title" CONTENT="candy bouquets, gift baskets, chocolate
gifts, candy baskets, corporate gift baskets">
<meta NAME="DC.Subject" CONTENT="candy bouquets, gift baskets, chocolate
gifts, candy baskets, corporate gift baskets, gourmet gifts, candy gifts,
baby gift baskets, edible gifts, custom gift baskets, office gifts,
christmas gifts, chocolate bouquet, sugar free chocolate, gifts">
<meta NAME="DC.Description" CONTENT="candy bouquets, gift baskets, chocolate
gifts, candy baskets, corporate gift baskets, gourmet gifts, candy gifts,
baby gift baskets, edible gifts, custom gift baskets, office gifts,
christmas gifts">
The main METAs you want to keep are your Keywords and Description tags. You might consider rewriting your Description META tag. Right now you've got a string of keywords in it, which probably won't give you a boost in the SE's, and isn't going to be very appealing to a potential customer when your page comes up in a query.

In addition, it would probably be a good idea to remove one or the other of your robots META tags (or both--SE's index pages and follow links by default, so unless you're preventing this, you don't really need the robots tag). Having two tags is redundant, although it probably wouldn't affect your rankings.

I'm not sure what the rest of the tags do. If you're using a WYSIWYG editor, they might be necessary for the editor, but I don't think they'll affect search engines one way or the other.

You shouldn't expect to be in the top 5 just by making changes to your META tags, but I think it can only help (at least the keyword stuffing thing). SEO isn't an exact science by any means (there are a lot of off-page factors that figure into rankings, such as link popularity), and you have to remember that everyone else's pages figure in to the equation as well. The landscape could be completely different than it was a year ago--more or different sites and different content.

And if you're ranking well on popular terms, you probably shouldn't hire an SEO--if it ain't broke, don't fix it. :)
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