Miva Merchant SEO Tip #1 – Custom Meta Content

This is the first post in a series we’ll run called Miva Merchant SEO Tips. The goal is to provide the “everyday” Miva Merchant store owner with practical ways to improve the on-page optimization of the stores.

Miva Merchant SEO Tip #1

USE MIVA MERCHANT’S BUILT IN META CONTENT SYSTEM

I know that sounds incredibly stupid and many of you are saying, “no duh”. Despite that, I’m amazed on a daily basis with how many Miva admin’s I go into where the store owner hasn’t customized the <meta description> or <meta keywords> for any categories or products.

Here’s how you do it.

(1) Click either Categories or Products in the left column of your admin.

(2) Click the Edit button to the right of the Category or Product you would like to customize meta content for.

(3) Once on the main edit screen, click the tab titled “META Tag Settings”.

(4) Once on this screen, you’ll see there are two areas to enter data. One is titled Keywords, the other is titled Description.

(5) For the Keywords tag, only input a handful (5-10) keywords or keyword phrases that are relevant to that page. NOTE that the <meta keywords> tag is ignored by Google, Yahoo and MSN, so don’t spend a lot of time here. In many cases its enough to simply copy the product name and a couple additional terms that you think are relevant. Also separate each entry by a comma and a space. You also don’t need to repeat terms, once they’re listed once. Example below:

Terms I’m Targeting: Miva Merchant Design, Miva Merchant Hosting, Miva Merchant SEO

What I would enter into the Keywrds text field:
Miva Merchant, Design, Hosting, SEO

(6) For the Description tag, you want to include a relevant text description of the page, up to 180 characters. It can be shorter or longer than 180 characters, but most SEO’s perfer that number because it seems to fit well with what Google, Yahoo & MSN look for in a description. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT OF THE TWO META TAGS, SO THIS SHOULD BE CRAFTED CAREFULLY. Once again, use keywords in the description, but your goal should make it sound readable. Don’t just stuff it full of keywords and junk because it very well could end up in your search engine listing, and you want it to make sense. Example below:

Terms I’m Targeting: Miva Merchant Design, Miva Merchant Hosting, Miva Merchant SEO

What I would enter into the Description text area:
This blog will help Miva Merchant store owners learn more about Miva Merchant Design, Miva Merchant 5.5 Hosting and Miva Merchant SEO.

Notice in that example I DID fully list out each keyword term I was targeting. I did that because I felt like it, but also because it was RELEVANT, meaning that if someone searched for Miva Merchant 5.5 Hosting, this description if included with my search result, would catch the readers eye and would increase the chance they click on my listing. Once again, that’s an example of doing what you should do to help your visitor, and not fool the search engine.

So if you have questions, or want some FREE advice, post a comment with a question and I will respond accordingly. Note that only QUESTIONS or ADDITIONAL TIPS will be allowed as comments on these posts, as they are meant to be “slightly educational”.