too many tags - dangerous?!

[DiggleNamer]

Q1
Hi there, I have just started my new site www.defending.com When I put the site in the SubmitExpress meta tag analyzer (http://www.submitexpress.com/analyzer/) it says that "Homepage contains 112 urls. Some Search Engines have problems with more than 100 urls on a page." If you look at the page you will see that this many URLs is just a function of the magazine style theme. Is it a serious problem?
Q2
The second part of my question relates to my use of tags. I decided to have over 30 tags per 800 word post, and in so doing this means that my 12 posts have generated over 200 URLs. Is this a problem? When I put http://defending.com/vehicular-manslaughter into the Submit Express it says "Description: This tag contains 315 characters. This is too many for what we would consider a 'robot friendly' web page. The maximum number of characters we recommend for this tag is 250." and "Keywords: This tag contains 31 keywords. This is too many for what we would consider a 'robot friendly' web page. The maximum number of keywords we recommend for this tag is 25." Is this a problem? Am i right in thinking that it is the title meta tag that is the really important one?

Thank you for taking a look at my question.

[canadafred]

Some of your links look at little spammy, especially in the "tag" box at bottom right corner.

Use Meta Keywords, Meta Description and Title however feels normal to you. Be careful about repeating things too often. The search engine will read it all and assign value to some of it, more than other parts, maybe.

You really should try to stick with a handful of different keyphrases (6 maybe) and branch out later adding more sections to the web site.

[DiggleNamer]

thank you, i guess i will reduce the number of tags on future posts. Or should I go through and start deleting tags?

Am i right in thinking that it is the title meta tag that is the really important one for SEs?

[canadafred]

thank you, i guess i will reduce the number of tags on future posts. Or should I go through and start deleting tags?

Am i right in thinking that it is the title meta tag that is the really important one for SEs?

Just use the standard webpage Title tag not the Meta Title. Meta Title is pretty much obsolete.

About starting to delete tags: I followed some of them and they all lead me around in a circle of tagged tags, Often, while going around in circles, the content was the same; with a zillion tags all over the place around it. This is not built for the Internet visitor in mind, primarily. Lotsa the stuff is unique and dandy but the merry-go-round ride's insane. I would think the search engine would get just about the same impression.

Build for the visitor first; content especially; then a solid, not overly done, internal linking structure empowring the most important webpages. Build like this and you'll please the spider too. Naturally evolve.

Does this mean deleting tags, yah. It also means re-thinking your SEO strategy to focus more on the content rather than the linking structure, and don't look spammy either; oh and you have identical one word keywords side-by-each, except one's pluralized, that pretty much negates their power.

[DiggleNamer]

thanks for the advice. I have deleted some tags.

i thought tags are picked up more by SEs than used on site for navigation. i thought they were a useful tool to get long tail words ranked.

but i am have taken your advice and deleted tags. i still have quite a few though

[kzvikzvi1]

canadafred

Interesting read... I was reading about SEO optimization and I read the internal links on same page adds to your page coming up on searches...I guess every search engine must be different but I heard that bing gives more importance to links in same page...
How does this make a difference from tags?

Managing Tags is difficult...for example here http://software-wikipedia.blogspot.com/ I have 20-30 tags about software...should I stick to only the standard categories of tags instead of post specific tags...

I would appreciate your input on this...

[canadafred]

...I would appreciate your input on this...

Your tags are quite good, each totally unique, no duplication, often only 1 article per tag (for now). Pretty good use of tags. I'd keep it up like that.

[DiggleNamer]

i thought that it was good to gave more articles per tag. but i guess what you are saying is that if all the articles come up under all the tags then that is negative and spam. when i reduced my tags i did it with that in mind, and you will see that there are now less tags with multiple articles. But perhaps I still have too many.

[canadafred]

i thought that it was good to gave more articles per tag. but i guess what you are saying is that if all the articles come up under all the tags then that is negative and spam. when i reduced my tags i did it with that in mind, and you will see that there are now less tags with multiple articles. But perhaps I still have too many.

If you had three different articles that fit in one tag then that's good. The point isn't to have the most tags, the point is to have the best articles. Tags should be used like directories, they contain more than one thing. Tags that have one article need to evolve.

Sometimes, an article can fit into two tags but that should be the exception to the rule. Articles with 3 or more tags should be avoided like the plaque.

[DiggleNamer]

crikey, well i will do some more pruning then. If I want to rank my homepage for a single word, like "criminal law" then would it help if all my articles contain that word and have that tag in addition to a maximum of two others?

[InsightsDigital]

From an analytics perspective, will the tags associated with each article help drive traffic to the site?

[mrandrei]

It's totally pointless to stuff a site with too many tags. Content and backlinks are the most important factors.

[John LA]

Having lots of links on a page can cause your rank to "bleed". Meaning it can go to the pointed link rather than staying on your site.

[canadafred]

DiggleNamer - Articles about criminal law should contain keyphrases relevant to criminal law. I would try keyphrase stuffing other unrelated articles. Perhaps keep criminal law articles on the top of the landing page and other articles below it.

InsightsDigital - I think it would have a positive traffic effect, but a relatively minor one. People showing up at the landing page get there anyway, they arrive somehow. Should they be directed to another page by clicking on a tag, then it's not really new traffic, it's a visitor navigating around the site.

[vincent2085]

An article can fit into two tags but that should be the exception to the rule.
Articles with 3 or more tags should be avoided

[DiggleNamer]

DiggleNamer - Articles about criminal law should contain keyphrases relevant to criminal law. I would try keyphrase stuffing other unrelated articles. Perhaps keep criminal law articles on the top of the landing page and other articles below it.

thanks, all my articles are about criminal law so i should be fine, although the magazine theme only shows the first paras so in future articles i will try to ensure some keywords feature in those.

[canadafred]

thanks, all my articles are about criminal law so i should be fine, although the magazine theme only shows the first paras so in future articles i will try to ensure some keywords feature in those.

I meant "I would NOT try keyphrase stuffing" (forgot the NOT) in unrelated articles. In articles about the subject then by all means, get those keyphrases in there.

Read about and practice of Keyphrase Dynamicability on my blog.

[DiggleNamer]

hehe i thought that advice was inconsistent, and started worrying about everything else you advised!