Limit meta tags with additional/optional field on new settings page
augsburgde - November 18, 2008 - 21:41
| Project: | Integrated Metatags |
| Version: | 6.x-1.0-beta6 |
| Component: | Code |
| Category: | feature request |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | fractile81 |
| Status: | closed |
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Description
Hello!
First: great module!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So my feature-request:
I have activated "Display Metatags with teasers?"
also i have e.g. following dynamic meta tags:
activated combined note.title description
and
activiated combined term.*.name keywords
the problem is that thera are to many keywords and the description is to long (not html-conform).
it would be great if you could insert a further more field where you can insert a number for every dynamic meta tag and perhaps also for every manual/static meta-tag a third value
eg.
activated combined note.title description 270
So if 270 characters are reached the rest becomes cropped
#1
+1 for the feature.
#2
Do you have a link to an RFC or somesuch that outlines the max length for these fields? I should probably just add the cap in for every field rather than have it be configurable.
Now, a question that needs to be asked is that, if I'm truncating the text in the field, should I implement some form of ordering?
#3
200 characters for keywords and meta-description should be enough - (google takes only around 160 characters of the meta-description, but could be that other search engines use a bit more...)
what do you mean with the ordering - can't follow your thoughts...
#4
By not truncating the data, all desired data is being displayed and is equally relevant. When you truncate the data, how do you know if the most appropriate data is being displayed? Is it possible that some data might be more relevant than others? Then we would need some form of order in this.
How far reaching should this ordering be? Should terms be ordered by weight, then alphanumeric? Or by time of entry? Or maybe something selectable by the user? Maybe I should just allow for the ordering of the fields? I certainly want to keep this simple, I just want to get some input on this.
I'll see if I can't find an RFC or something that defines a maximum length for these fields so they can be compliant.
#5
i think it's hard to say which ordering is the best - but to keep it simple it would be the best to order from newest to oldest.
new stuff is more interesting for search engines then old one...
#6
I'm going to sit on this for now. I realize the value in limiting the length of the content, but I need some more time to think through ordering and the like. Please submit any additional thoughts, or links to a resource outlining a need to limit this field, in this thread.
#7
e.g. this:
http://danhounshell.com/blogs/dan/archive/2008/04/21/maximum-length-for-...
http://www.eireseo.ie/seo-tutorials/2008/09/22/meta-data-description-key...
#8
Just posting some thoughts:
What I'm getting from the first link is that it doesn't really matter how long a description is (but Google will only show the first 150 character in a search result, even though it looks at the whole thing). In the next update, I'll be including node teasers as an option, so that should all be manageable by the end user to some degree.
The only lingering question is keywords. The second link suggests 30-35 words, but gives no links to back this number up. Does it actually break SEO to have too many? Might it work best to have a special case for keywords that truncates it past x words? Cutting it off will still mean needing some form of ordering if at all possible, I'm just trying to see if there's a simple solution that won't inhibit people from doing what they want with this.
#9
I think that the limit for the keywords means that the search engine could low the rank for pages which have too much keywords. Normally, a page with too much keywords is trying to be showed in more search pages possible, and that is why such pages get a lower rank from the search engines. Honestly, I think that 30 words for the keywords meta tag is a limit that web site content could not exceed; you can put a warning if that limit is surpassed, but there is no way to say that more than 30 words for keywords are not accepted by search engines.
An alternative is to limit the keywords to 20 words, or to a number the administrator is able to change.
#10
best would be, if the user/admin is able to change the length of keywords and description.
with the keywords there are many search engine experts which say that there should not be more then 10 keywords.
The keywords were important in the past - nowadays its minimally important - if there are to many keywords some search-engines like google will treat that like "SPAM" and so the page relevancy gets degraded
#11
I really don't want to bloat the interface anymore than it already is. I've had complaints that the dynamic field UI, for example, is too wide. Adding an extra column at this point really isn't an option when people have fixed-width themes (I had to move the Combine? checkbox from the right-side of the text field to the left side).
What if I made a configuration page that let the user configure the keyword and description tags, then a general default for all others? For each, the interface would allow:
This would be easy to do in both D5 and D6 without bloating the current UI any. To enforce the caps, I would just use substr(); (character cap) and str_word_count(); (word count). Thoughts?
#12
To me, it seems a good solution.
I agree that all those settings cannot stay in a single setting page, and to have a different page specific for description, and keyword tags is fine.
#13
yes I think thats's the best solution with an additional settings-page for keywords and description...
#14
i have one more addition for that additional settings-page.
there should also be the meta-tag "content-language" - it tells the Searchbot in which language the content is available.
but the problem with this tag is that it looks like:
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en" />it' not built with name= but instead with http-equiv - http://www.submitcorner.com/Guide/Meta/language.shtml
#15
I think that is a great idea, but should probably be made into its own issue. Could you start a new issue on this?
Some things to consider:
* Shouldn't this be on every page?
* What if we tapped into the current localization settings rather than have it be selectable?
* Would it be possible that it should support multiple languages on a single page (D6 only)? Your link mentions that multiple languages on a single page should be possible, but not how (comma-separated list, or one tag per language?).
If you could link to the new issue in this one, that'd be great. Thanks!
#16
The newest release (BETA6) has the original feature request in it. Please create a new issue for the secondary feature request.
#17
there is a bug:
if in /admin/settings/int_meta chars is chossen an cap is set greater then 0,
then an all pages the meta-tags are included, the word "chars" is printed before the html-code of the page.
if this is set for description, keywords and other - the word "chars" get printed 3 times...
#18
You can comment out (or remove) line 992 to remove this. Evidently, I forgot to remove some debug code...
My next release for this module will be the full-on 1.0 release (no more betas!). This will be fixed in that.
#19
Automatically closed -- issue fixed for two weeks with no activity.