A while back I came across a great post regarding how to use some of the meta tags on DNN. This article shares with you the importance of various tags and other settings that will help get your DNN site indexed better by the various search engines. I’ve highlighted some of the key points below.
Page Title (Really Important):
The Page Title is another very important aspect of on-page SEO. This represents the title tag found in the head section of a web page. Simply enter your page title in the Page Title text box. The search engines use the title of a web page in their ranking factors to help determine what a page is about. It is very important to use an appropriate and effective page title, ideally using your keywords.
In addition, it is the page title that is displayed as the linked text when returned in a search engine result page (SERP). From a user perspective it is the first thing that is generally seen in their search results when skimming the page. For example, if you are trying to rank well for ‘DotNetNuke SEO’ and you name your page ‘SEO Tutorials > My Company Name’, you are not providing the user or the search engine with a page title as optimized as it can be for the phrase ‘DotNetNuke SEO’. Depending on the competition for that search phrase your page is less likely to be returned in the first few items of the search engine result page (SERP), and if it were, the user isn’t provided with targeted link text related to ‘DotNetNuke SEO’ and may just skip over the item. A better page title would be ‘DotNetNuke SEO Tutorials by My Company Name’. The search phrase ‘DotNetNuke SEO’ is used first in the title so the search engines and the user clearly knows what the page is about. In addition the search engines will bold the keywords found in the title matching the search phrase. So your title will be ‘DotNetNuke SEO Tutorials by My Company Name’ thus bringing more attention to the actual search term.
Best practice dictates that you should not have blank or duplicate page titles and the title should be roughly 70 characters. Though more can be used and will be seen by the search engines, most of the search engines display only 70 characters. Personally I would rather have my entire page title displayed in the search results rather than the first 70 characters followed by … But again, that’s just my preference and not always feasible. You can add more or less, but be mindful of the SEO aspects when choosing a title for your page.
Description (Somewhat important)
The Page Description represents the META description tag found in the head section of the web page. Simply enter your page description in the Description text box. Generally speaking a best practice approach is to keep your page descriptions to around 160 characters. Again, this is largely due to the number of characters the search engines usually display on their result pages.
Though it has been documented that META descriptions are not relevant to search engine rankings– at least in Google, Bing and Yahoo– they are very important in describing the web page to the user. The description is displayed right under your page title. It is best to treat your page description as a short, yet compelling advertisement with appropriate use of your keywords. Creating your page descriptions this way tends to draw a much higher click-through rate. In addition, the search engines bold the keywords used in the description , just like they do in the page title when they match the search queries. Studies show that descriptions that display bold keywords have higher click through rates than those that do not. Consider the following example. If you were searching for ‘DotNetNuke SEO’, when skimming the search engine result page of your search which, result is more enticing?
Another quick tip is to not use quotes in your descriptions if it can be avoided. The search engines use quotes as a delimiter and tend to truncate the description. And like the page title it is important to avoid blank page descriptions and be sure they are unique for each page on your site.
Keywords (least important )
Under Page Details you will also find the Keywords textbox. This relates to the META keywords tag found in the head section of a web page. As with the page description, the META keywords tag is not relevant to search engine rankings. They also do not provide any real value to the end user. However, it has been said to provide value to your competition, providing them an easy means to identify which keywords are important to your website. If you choose to add keywords, just add a comma separated list in the Keywords textbox.
