Drupal 6 Tutorial – SEO With Meta Tags
Today we will be covering another important SEO topic: Meta Tags. So what are meta tags exactly? Well, they are tags, but not just any normal tags. They are invisible tags! These tags add additional information about the current page, that search engines can use to your advantage. Your users won’t see anything different on your pages at all, but spiders will see quite a bit more. We will be referring to 2 of these meta tags today: Description and Keywords.
The Description Meta Tag
If you recall the last tutorial (Drupal 6 Tutorial – SEO With Page Titles) you will remember how I said that search engines list your page’s title in the search results, and that’s why it was so important for SEO. But also, when you do a search, there is some additional text right under the main title. And that usually is the description. It is very important to have meaningful descriptions that actually tell the visitor what the page is about, but what you need to pay extra attention to is that you don’t have any duplicate descriptions (multiple pages with the same description). Keep your descriptions smart and informative, but don’t exceed 150 chars, as most engines will not display more than that.
All meta tags need to be placed inside your html <head> tag. The description meta tag for this page looks like this:
Imagine that you would have to manage it like that for each and every one of your pages. That would be a pain. Luckily the Nodewords module is here to save the day. Get it here, upload it to your server and activate Nodewords, and Nodewords – basic meta tags. Now go to Administer > Content Management > Meta Tags.
The first option lets you choose what tags will the users be able to alter on the node edit page.
If you are logged in with the admin account, you will always see all the tags on the edit page. So, depending on what kind of users you have on your website, you may want to change this to fit your needs. However, if you do decide to change it, don’t forget to set up the proper permissions at Administer > User Management > Permissions.
Next we choose which tags actually get placed in our <head> tag on our pages:
That’s about all you need to do for now. You can also set some default values for your tags, but I don’t recommend it, as you will need to write specific information related to the current page anyway. If your home page is not a node though, you can set it’s tags in the Default and specific meta tags section. Now you can start editing your nodes to your heart’s content!
What keywords should I pick?
This has been a pretty debated topic in the past, and since google doesn’t care about them, most people just ignore them. Truth is, other smaller engines still use them. Apparently Yahoo ditched them as well, but after a closer inspection it turned out that they haven’t removed them completely, but have greatly decreased their importance.
However, you should still properly research your keywords and strategically place them inside your page title, <h1>, <h2> tags, and description. A good way to find good targeted keywords for your page is by using the Google Keyword Tool. There you can write your own keywords, and you will get a full list of suggestions, accompanied by search statistics and advertiser competition. The best keywords that you can pick have a high number of monthly searches, but a small advertiser competition.
If you are feeling uninspired with your keywords, you can even type in your page URL, and then google will examine it for you, and find some suggestions based on your content.
After you pick your keywords and place them accordingly throughout your content, you can also add them to the keywords meta tag. I usually use 5 to 7 keywords there. But remember, only use keywords that are actually in your page’s content.
That’s it for meta tags for today. I hope that this was as useful as you expected it to be 
If not, please share your thoughts below.
Aj
Great article! Also worth a mention in relation to this quote—’If your home page is not a node though, you can set its tags in the Default and specific meta tags section.’—you can now also add specific meta tags to the views (list pages) using the Default and specific meta tags>other pages tab. It is simple and a great addition! Speaking of which, time to get back to updating our sites with the latest version of Nodewords.
Thanks for the article.
Alex
Hehe yes good point. I didn’t mention views here as this was more like a newbie tutorial, but yeah, this module does just about everything you need.
The “other pages” option has been around for quite some time if I’m not mistaken. I know I’ve used Nodewords on views pages in December last year.
Thanks for your comment,
Alex
dev
Best article, i like it. thanks a lot