mmmm...Meta Tags - help/guidance needed

[photogold]

You'll have to excuse my ignorance but I am not that familiar with PHP . What are case statements ? what statement do I need to remove or edit to get rid of the category names in the meta description tag ? Thanks for your help

[Ajeh]

This starts the selection of code to build the keywords to include the category names ...

// Get all top category names for use with web site keywords
$sql = "select cd.categories_name from " . TABLE_CATEGORIES . " c, " . TABLE_CATEGORIES_DESCRIPTION . " cd where c.parent_id = 0 and c.categories_id = cd.categories_id and cd.language_id='" . (int)$_SESSION['languages_id'] . "' and c.categories_status=1";
$keywords_metatags = $db->Execute($sql);
while (!$keywords_metatags->EOF) {
  $keywords_string_metatags .= $keywords_metatags->fields['categories_name'] . ' ';
  $keywords_metatags->MoveNext();
}
define('KEYWORDS', str_replace('"','',zen_clean_html($keywords_string_metatags) . CUSTOM_KEYWORDS)); 

If you never want to see a single category name in your meta tags you would change this section of code so that KEYWORDS never has anything in it when it starts to look at the case statements below to add on to that define ...

[DesignbyDemeter]

Been reading this thread and others and I'm a bit confused. I understand in the previous post how to stop generating those weird keywords. However, I'm still confused about inserting predefined keywords and description for my main page. I have modified my custom template files but they do not appear to be populating.

It would be so cool in the next version to have a way to do this from Admin without having to futz with code.

[photogold]

I tried removing some of the code but I got this message -
Warning: Missing argument 1 for zen_clean_html() in /home/322/first121/www.castlepictures.com/public_html/includes/functions/functions_general.php on line 1216

what code should I remove exactly ?

[Ajeh]

Change this:

// Get all top category names for use with web site keywords
$sql = "select cd.categories_name from " . TABLE_CATEGORIES . " c, " . TABLE_CATEGORIES_DESCRIPTION . " cd where c.parent_id = 0 and c.categories_id = cd.categories_id and cd.language_id='" . (int)$_SESSION['languages_id'] . "' and c.categories_status=1";
$keywords_metatags = $db->Execute($sql);
while (!$keywords_metatags->EOF) {
  $keywords_string_metatags .= $keywords_metatags->fields['categories_name'] . ' ';
  $keywords_metatags->MoveNext();
}
define('KEYWORDS', str_replace('"','',zen_clean_html($keywords_string_metatags) . CUSTOM_KEYWORDS)); 

To read:

/*
// Get all top category names for use with web site keywords
$sql = "select cd.categories_name from " . TABLE_CATEGORIES . " c, " . TABLE_CATEGORIES_DESCRIPTION . " cd where c.parent_id = 0 and c.categories_id = cd.categories_id and cd.language_id='" . (int)$_SESSION['languages_id'] . "' and c.categories_status=1";
$keywords_metatags = $db->Execute($sql);
while (!$keywords_metatags->EOF) {
  $keywords_string_metatags .= $keywords_metatags->fields['categories_name'] . ' ';
  $keywords_metatags->MoveNext();
}
define('KEYWORDS', str_replace('"','',zen_clean_html($keywords_string_metatags) . CUSTOM_KEYWORDS));
*/
define('KEYWORDS',''); 

This will start the KEYWORDS to have no value ...

You will then need to check your pages to see what the results will be in order to customize them further ...

[photogold]

Your suggested code works perfectly . Thanks for helping me on this . It might be a good idea to add a feature in the next version of Zencart to allow websites to edit the meta tag description from the Admin area . It's quite a crucial meta tag - I've heard that it is the only one that search engines actually index .

[Ajeh]

Search engines will index all of your pages ...

Build your pages to have proper text, meaning significant text, to increase their content value for search engines ...

While meta tags are helpful, they are not the end all and be all ...

The content is more significant ... the content relative to the meta tags is significant ...

Notice the custom meta tags for each Category and Product ...

Notice the categories_description and products_description ... these are highly important ...

Lack of content is the major issue ...

I have customers with 79,000 pages in Google ... the search engines do like more than the index ... :)

[baschwar]

I would like to know how to limit the # of meta keywords and descriptions used on the home page and other pages. The posts above didn't really clarify that for me.

I looke for MAX_META_TAG_DESCRIPTION_LENGTH but I dont' see anywhere in the admin, etc. to input a value.

Thanks,


Brad

[anjordan77]

How would i make it use the main Title for the index page but then after use the meta tag title i so pain stakingly entered for each of my 500 products.

The Meta Description and Meta Keywords are working good for every product.

Zen Cart 1.3.0

http://www.allpaintballsupplies.com

I'm trying to get my title to change when you are in looking at the actual product like this website does:
http://www.firstcallpaintball.com/pa...3537ec90adab2d

notice how their title changes when they go to different product pages. how do i set that up?

[TLC]

What would make almost all of my meta tags disappear?

I didn't notice this until this morning but I am going to have to create meta tags for almost all of my 745 products/catagories again!

I recently did the 1.3.5 upgrade. Also had installed the GoogleFroogle mod, then had problems with that changing all my prices to '0', so I deleted the GoogleFroogle mod.

I think the meta tags had to have disappeared BEFORE the GoogleFroogle thing because I ended up having to use my database backup to restore my web site and I just noticed that most of the catagories and all of the products meta tags are gone. They could have been missing for awhile, but what would cause this?