Google Search for Audacity Forum

[steve]

Using the following search query:
http://www.google.com/search?&q=audacity++forum

First hit (from "about 973,000 results")

Search Results:

1.
Audacity Forum • Index page
This Forum is ONLY for problems about downloading or obtaining Audacity 1.2 series, or about it failing to complete installation. ...
forum.audacityteam.org/ - Cached - Similar

Also, the forum pages (including the Index page) appear to contain no keyword metatags - the tag is present but no data has been added.
The meta tags are in the top of the overall_header.html file. For both of the default phpBB 3 styles, they are in the first 13 lines.

[Gale Andrews]

See the same issue reported earlier:
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 32&t=37079


Gale

[Gale Andrews]

I've now included meta keywords and description in overall_header.html as:

<meta name="keywords" content="Audacity help forum audio software recording editing sounds" />

<meta name="description" content="Audacity Forum provides expert assistance for the free Audacity audio editor. To post a question, click on the correct subforum and choose New Topic." />

<meta name="robots" content="NOODP">

Google's take on what influences the site description in search results is here:
http://www.google.com/support/webmaster ... swer=35264

suggesting the meta description is the main/preferred source.

The "NOODP" tag I added means Google won't use DMOZ data for generating descriptions, which could be poor since we haven't been using descriptions and don't have any suitable descriptive text at the top of the body either.




Gale

[steve]

I doubt that it will make much difference to Google, but I don't think there's any harm in using metatags.

I think that the keywords should be comma separated ( http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_meta.asp )

<meta name="keywords" content="Audacity help forum,audio software,recording,editing sounds" />

[Gale Andrews]

Thanks. I used the keywords from the main web site which have no separation (!), but it seems separation is better practice so I'l'l fix the main site. For the Forum, it's now:

<meta name="keywords" content="Audacity, help, forum, audio software, recording, editing sounds" />

I'm sure due to spam abuse, meta tags don't influence ranking any longer. But if the Google page I quoted is to be believed, having good description tags should help us get a better search description given we can't really have that text on the pages themselves. And of course it will take time for any changes to be visible in search results.

Have you got any other ideas what we could do? If you want to tweak the Forum meta, please just do so.



Gale

[steve]

I'm sure due to spam abuse, meta tags don't influence ranking any longer.

I'm sure you're right.

having good description tags should help us get a better search description

It should do.

Have you got any other ideas what we could do?

Have you had a look at the Google webmaster tools? http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
In particular "site maps"? With having the main site, forum and wiki as high ranking sites, the site map tool may help to improve the visibility of the manual.
Access to the server is required to use the webmaster tools because it is necessary to upload a small text file for verification purposes.

[Gale Andrews]

Have you had a look at the Google webmaster tools? http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
In particular "site maps"? With having the main site, forum and wiki as high ranking sites, the site map tool may help to improve the visibility of the manual.
Access to the server is required to use the webmaster tools because it is necessary to upload a small text file for verification purposes.

http://audacityteam.org/ has lots of Google verification files on the server, so it looks like it's been tried before, and I can't get the google verification html page or the meta tag addition to verify. Maybe Google can't cope with http://audacityteam.org/ serving .php pages?

I got it to verify for http://forum.audacityteam.org/.

The search description for the Manual grabs the text from the bottom about screenshots being of Windows, again I suppose because there is no meta description tag. So obviously if I can figure what page buried in the server lets me add the meta description I could add the Google meta verifier tag. If so, what do you suggest adding to Google as a sitemap -
http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... l:AllPages ?




Gale