Change a title tag?

[Don Chambers]

BTW, if you can add something to your plugin that allows a default title/description for overview and archive pages that would be grand.

That is the pending functionality that I am working on.

Sorry about the title and H1 thing, I've actually done some other experiments with my site, in the default template the entry title is both an H1 an an H3/H4 I can't remember exactly which, but in my template the entry title is only an H1 on the detail page, and on the overview page it isn't even a header tag at all, it's just a regular paragraph. I did this to reduce the prominence of the overview page in the search results in favour of my detail pages. It has worked, several pages have been dragged out of the supplementary index by doing this.

I see what you are doing. On your multi-entry pages (ie, index, etc) your h1 tag is your banner/header blog title, but entry titles are only <p>'s. On a detailed entry page (single entry), your banner/header is a <p> and your entry title is the h1. Seems to me you could have always allowed that first line of the banner/header to ALWAYS be an h1, which it is by default in most templates. This also has the effect of locating the h1 much earlier in the page. About the only difference I see is that most templates treat the detailed (single) entry title as an h3 or h4. I'm probably not fully appreciating your intent.

Frankly I don't want my frontpage to even be in the index. With Live.com, yahoo and Ask it isn't as much of a problem, but with Goggle, massive problem.

Why is this a "massive problem"?

[carl_galloway]

Don,

The H1 is moved down the page for AdSense. I get more relevant advertising with the H1 being closer to the content, from an SEO perspective I doubt it makes a difference.

The frontpage being indexed is a problem because the frontpage has the high PR, which means that my detail pages often compete with it, especially when there is something on the frontpage that targets the same keywords as the detail page. This isn't a duplicate content issue, it just means that my detail pages often fall further back in the SERPs, so if visitors come to my frontpage they may not find what they're looking for and leave, whereas if they entered on the detail page they'd get the info and possibly convert better. It's only a problem with G because of Page rank (PR), the other engines use different algorithms and my detail pages get better results.

[carl_galloway]

Just to demonstrate what this plugin can do, follow this Google link, and look for my site. Then take a look at the way the listing is formatted. I think you can all see the power in this.

[Don Chambers]

Looks good Carl - hopefully my attempts to make this plugin template-independent (ie, no modifications required to index.tpl) will result in a page that looks like the one you are generating with the plugin prototype.

Question - what are decent rules of thumb for the number of words, or total character length of <title>, meta description and meta keywords?

I have the following general understanding:

<title>: 3-9 words, 64 characters maximum including spaces.
meta description: 20-30 words, 120-180 characters maximum including spaces.
meta keywords: 15-20 words utilizing keywords and phrases from entry content.

Again - rules of thumb since none of these are technically "limited" as far as I know. Regarding <title>, I think google will actually display up to 66 characters while Yahoo displays something like 120.....

Any input appreciated.