Meta tags

[Kerrib4]

Hi,

I have a blog section on my website which is a page in the main domain (its not a subdomain). The problem with is, I can only alter the meta tags for the 'blog' and not the 'posts'. So basically all the meta tags are the same for every post that I write, and my shopping cart does not give me the option in the admin panel to edit those.

What I am wondering is, my shopping cart say that they can edit the coding so that I can give each and every blog post its own seperate meta tags. They said that it will cost me $400 which is roughly £255.

I know meta tags are important for SEO, so do you think it is well worth the money?

Any advice would be great.

Thanks,
Kerri

 

[los_design]

Hi,

I have a blog section on my website which is a page in the main domain (its not a subdomain). The problem with is, I can only alter the meta tags for the 'blog' and not the 'posts'. So basically all the meta tags are the same for every post that I write, and my shopping cart does not give me the option in the admin panel to edit those.

What I am wondering is, my shopping cart say that they can edit the coding so that I can give each and every blog post its own seperate meta tags. They said that it will cost me $400 which is roughly £255.

I know meta tags are important for SEO, so do you think it is well worth the money?

Any advice would be great.

Thanks,
Kerri

What is your CMS?

Tell me it is not another 'bespoke build' that is tied to a supplier...please..........

 

[Coppock]

Hi, meta descriptions are more important than the keyword tags. I'd personally say that they are a "must" but you could save a few pennies by knowing what content management system your blog runs on.

If it's wordpress there's free plugins available that will let you put meta tags on each post quite easily.

If you are unsure what content management system your blog uses post us a link, one of us is bound to figure it out for you

Have a good weekend!
Jen

 

[Big Pete]

I wouldnt sweat on the meta tags .. seems google ignores them nowdays due to knowing we all just stuff search stuff in..

meta description still good though ,but even then i have had sites hit the top with none ,,so dont lose sleep over it a good site filled with NO flashing boxes and gizmos but good solid text content is the way to go in my opinion

 

[Kerrib4]

My website is an ecommerce store, the blog is just a page on the website, it's not an actual blog.

Thanks

 

[quikshop]

Hi Kerri,

That's daylight robbery if ever I've heard of it

Meta tags still have some importance but ask this question on the SEO, Advertising thread, you will get all the help you need for free and plenty of derision for that shocking quote

 

[los_design]

My website is an ecommerce store, the blog is just a page on the website, it's not an actual blog.

Thanks

I gathered that, what flavour? Brand, type....

ie Xcart, Actinic etc

 

[The Biggest Clearance]

I wouldnt sweat on the meta tags .. seems google ignores them nowdays due to knowing we all just stuff search stuff in..

meta description still good though ,but even then i have had sites hit the top with none ,,so dont lose sleep over it a good site filled with NO flashing boxes and gizmos but good solid text content is the way to go in my opinion

I agree with Pete on this one, however meta tags are still playing a big role on the whole SEO.
Alternating the code to your needs could be very difficult and expensive, but what i would recommend here, go to freelancer.com and find the outsourcing for this job.
Here you can find a whole bunch of freelancers from Asia and Middle East doing all sorts of job very cheap. I am using them for lots of our SEO works too, it's a good source.
You will end up paying 30 quid for this job.

Hope that helps, Eric

 

[J-Wholesale]

Despite what some people seem to be saying, your meta description is very important. It may not factor much or at all in your Google ranking, but quite often Google pulls the two lines of text displayed under your link directly from the meta description rather than the page content.

A good or badly worded meta description can make all the difference when it comes to someone clicking or not clicking on your link. What use is a position in the top three of page one, if people are put off by the descriptive text under your link? And what use is all that great content if Google chooses to display your not so great meta description instead, and no one clicks through to read your great content?

£255 is not a lot of money for work undertaken just for you, especially since no one on this thread knows anything about your business, your eCommerce provider, the package used, and your contract with them. If you have no ongoing maintenance contract, then it's perfectly normal to be charged high for any work that needs doing.

 

[quikshop]

£255 is not a lot of money for work undertaken just for you.

£255 for 10 minutes work... and that's including their coffee break. There is no excuse for that quote, no matter what the software solution is.

 

[Kerrib4]

Our shopping cart is 3dcart. Had loads of problems with them.

Well the problem is, they are trying to tell me that this job can only be done by them. This seems a bit weird though. Do you think they are just saying this to get money out of me?

Thanks

 

[los_design]

Export your products, source an alternative then bin em!

Something as basic as meta's should always be under your control.

Feel free to shout if you need any help...WITHOUT CHARGE

Bet you don't see that on this forum much LOL

 

[Kerrib4]

£255 for 10 minutes work... and that's including their coffee break. There is no excuse for that quote, no matter what the software solution is.

3dcart have told me it will take them 5hours to do this work. I didn't think it would take them all that time either.

 

[quikshop]

Our shopping cart is 3dcart. Had loads of problems with them.

Ah, well if you are tied into propriotory software then you are at the mercy of the software owners.

We added meta tag control in our Ecommerce platform free of charge, and happy to add any functionality for free that benefits all shop owners.

 

[Kerrib4]

Export your products, source an alternative then bin em!

Something as basic as meta's should always be under your control.

Feel free to shout if you need any help...WITHOUT CHARGE

Bet you don't see that on this forum much LOL

I wish we could do that, we just don't have the knowledge right now of what to look for in other shopping cart packages etc :|

 

[J-Wholesale]

£255 for 10 minutes work... and that's including their coffee break. There is no excuse for that quote, no matter what the software solution is.

That's a ludicrous statement considering how little we know about the OPs situation. He may have a bespoke system that hasn't been touched in years, in which case the company responsible for your 10 minutes work would need to extract the client specific code from whatever repository it's held in, set up a test environment on the operating system and database in use on the particular server, make the code change (10 minutes for a guy already familiar with the code... who knows how long for the new guy?), test it, ensure the small change doesn't impact any other clients or introduce any bugs, then role it out and test it again. Almost forgot, write a module to allow the client to update each meta description for each page.

That's a hell of a 10 minutes.

Writing code is easy and tends not to take that much time. Finding out the precise requirements, setting up your environment, testing (and testing, and testing), followed by rolling out, monitoring and giving the client a tutorial are all what takes the real time. Forgetting to factor all these things in to quotes and time frames is why so many IT projects (not just eCommerce sites) come in late, over budget, and riddled with bugs.

 

[Kerrib4]

In your opinions, how long do you recon this job would take? Do you think they are lying about it being a 5 hour job?

 

[los_design]

In your opinions, how long do you recon this job would take? Do you think they are lying about it being a 5 hour job?

About 10 seconds to open the file
10 seconds to add the html
10 seconds to upload the file

Job done

 

[J-Wholesale]

In your opinions, how long do you recon this job would take? Do you think they are lying about it being a 5 hour job?

Who knows? It may be that the job will take that long. It may be that they just don't undertake custom work for less than £250. A software company I worked at years ago occasionally did some client specific work, but regardless of the time involved, the minimum charge was 1 days work (£850). It just wasn't worth diverting a developer from other projects for less.

 

[Kerrib4]

Thanks for all of your opinions. One more question though, what do you think of them telling me that they can only do this job for me and I can't get anyone else to do it?

 

[los_design]

Who knows? It may be that the job will take that long. It may be that they just don't undertake custom work for less than £250. A software company I worked at years ago occasionally did some client specific work, but regardless of the time involved, the minimum charge was 1 days work (£850). It just wasn't worth diverting a developer from other projects for less.

If that was the case then these guys should state as such.

Sounds like they want to charge £50 a hour.

 

[Coppock]

Hi, if you post us a link to the site we can all take a look at the site for you. It could be that the site can be recreated quickly in another CMS which could solve all the problems you've been having.

Jen

 

[neverenoughnotes]

Man, I should really get into the SEO business...!

 

[quikshop]

Writing code is easy and tends not to take that much time. Finding out the precise requirements, setting up your environment, testing (and testing, and testing), followed by rolling out, monitoring and giving the client a tutorial are all what takes the real time. Forgetting to factor all these things in to quotes and time frames is why so many IT projects (not just eCommerce sites) come in late, over budget, and riddled with bugs.

And if you include a session of Salsa-dancing then 10 minutes really does become a stretch

Yes, 10 minutes was a throwaway comment meant to be as equally ridiculous as their quote. The truth of the matter lies somewhere in between, but theses are meta tags we're talking about, not re-working the middle tier of a legacy Cobol insurance program.

Even on a complex white-labelled product its all new stuff that should not impact on existing functionality if their software has any sort of structure to it. If its a standalone installation then the process will be even quicker.

But yes, this is all assuming they know what they are doing.

The other issue is this, if the changes only benefit the OP then they can get away with unreasonable quotes, if the changes they make to the software benefit all of their clients, why charge at all?

They would be getting additional value by being able to promote a new feature to all of their clients.

 

[los_design]

As stated by many guys here, it would not take more than 1 minute to insert a variable into the head sections and even if they charge you a minimum 1 hour of £xx they should state....

Not 5 hours, what are they doing??

 

[movietub]

Despite what some people seem to be saying, your meta description is very important. It may not factor much or at all in your Google ranking, but quite often Google pulls the two lines of text displayed under your link directly from the meta description rather than the page content.

A good or badly worded meta description can make all the difference when it comes to someone clicking or not clicking on your link. What use is a position in the top three of page one, if people are put off by the descriptive text under your link? And what use is all that great content if Google chooses to display your not so great meta description instead, and no one clicks through to read your great content?

£255 is not a lot of money for work undertaken just for you, especially since no one on this thread knows anything about your business, your eCommerce provider, the package used, and your contract with them. If you have no ongoing maintenance contract, then it's perfectly normal to be charged high for any work that needs doing.

I think people were syaing meta keywords are not that important, everyone seems to agree that meta descriptions are very important.

It sounds like the CMS is shared amongst other users. If you pay them to implement this feature for you whats to stop them giving the benefit to everyone else that uses the CMS? You could be paying them to improve their core product. It would be worth asking them to do it for a lot less or assure you that the extra functionality would be exclusive to your account only.

£255 may or may not be a fair price. It depends on how the system works and how much hassle it causes them. It may mean they have to revise a module that has other operations based upon it.

Is £255 worth it to be able to edit meta descriptions? Yes, I would say so.

 

[Kerrib4]

Hi guys,

Thanks for your replies.

I have emailed 3dcart and told them that thr price is a bit steep and if they can give me a lower quote. Worth a try....

I have also asked them if this work is going to be exclusive to my account.

So, just waiting on them replying now.

By the way my link is www (dot) babyonthego (dot) co.uk

If you go to the blog section (you will see the page link at the top of the page), click on that and you will see my list of articles. Each of those have the same meta tags.

Thanks again

 

[Coppock]

So its just the blog posts without meta descriptions.... they all use a generic;

BabyOnTheGo's blog pages are packed with important and useful information. Our blogs are really helpful for people who have kid's. We have blogs that can help you to choose a car seat - blogs explaining the types of car seats

If they won't lower the quote maybe it would be worth getting them to rewrite the meta description to be better for the search engines?

Jen