Meta Keywords and Descriptions

Hi Jill

I just subscribed to your newsletter this year, and have found it to be extremely useful and interesting to read.

My understanding is, if you have Meta tags with keywords and descriptions, this should also be reflected in your actual page content. But what if you have an ecommerce site and a homepage that displays mostly products and very short descriptions, and a menu with category names, etc.? In other words, not so much space for text "blocks." With most ecommerce sites, you don't have a lot of text on the homepage (unless perhaps you have a small news section), and products with some images are the main "content" on the homepage.

How do you then, on your homepage, have a visible written description matching what you would say in your meta tag description. Most meta tag analysis tools would say the relevancy is poor.

Does this really matter for getting picked up by search engines? Obviously individual product pages have more content / description of the product and may get picked up, but I'd think you'd also want your homepage getting picked up by search engines?

Thanks,

Jasmine

PS: Congrats on the mention in MarketingSherpa. I was pleased that I was already a subscriber to your newsletter and onto something good!

Jill's Response

Hi Jasmine,

First off, don't worry about the Meta keywords and descriptions; they don't need to use the same words you have on your page. Generally your description would be similar, but if it's not, it's not a problem.

That said, you very much DO need to be concerned about the content on all your pages. All pages can and should have content that describes what they're all about. How will the people who come to your pages know what they are, if they're all graphical? There are tons of ways of adding great content that describes exactly what you offer that won't ruin your design.

You may want to read Karon Thackston's copywriting articles from our previous newsletters to get you started and also the copywriting articles on her site.

Hope this helps!

Jill

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