When I fired the Virtual Felt website I didn't have a clue as to what I was getting into, when you consider the fact that the only reason I ever used a computer before that was for surfing the Internet. To give you an example at how oblivious I was to design, blogging, etc., when I first encountered the term HTML, I thought that it was short for "Hotmail"!. When you have an addictive personality like I do it was just a matter of time (OK, the first night) before I was tweaking my blog template at three o'clock in the morning, and putting holes in the wall because of the insanity that comes with trying to change every little thing about the appearance of my blog, or attempting to modify the functions which are not supposed to be modified. I simply refused to call it a day until everything looked right because not only do I have an addictive personality, but I have mild Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. However, I believe that it is these two characteristics which have allowed me to have amazing success in life and rise to the top at whatever it is that I take on. Unfortunately these same characteristics have allowed me to see what it is like to crash into the depths of human despair just as easily! Once completed, each of your pages will now have its very own unique Meta Keywords and Meta Description tags. Yes, you do need to do this for every page that you want to optimize. I can't guarantee anything, but if you are having problems getting pages indexed, it is definitely worth giving a shot. Don't worry about having too much "junk" in the [head] [/head] section. Think about this, these spiders crawl millions of sites a day, do you really think it will get held up by a few extra lines in our measly blogs? Once it sees the correct URL, it will know that the content on that page is to be indexed using the specific Meta tags that it just crawled. Also, when you look at the Page Source for an individual page, the only thing displayed are the Meta Keywords and Meta Description tags for that particular page, not your entire string of tags which are in your template you edit in Blogger. So give this a shot and I hope it allows your content to finally be properly distributed.
The Website you are looking at is actually just a Blogger blog template that I received for free by having an account with Google. As those of you that are also involved with Blogger know, your initial choice of templates is very limited. After trying all of the options available, I finally settled on the Minima Black template. I thought that it looked "cool", you know?! After about one day of looking around the Internet and seeing all the Minima Black templates, I dumped that thing, searched around, and found the free Ads Theme Template from eblogtemplates.com. It is now basically a skeleton of that template, having since been "chopped and screwed" about one thousand times until it has reached the current state that you see now.
The reason I decided to post this article, which is really off-topic for me considering that Virtual Felt is an online poker and casino games website), is because the other day I was reading an article on a website about how it is impossible to change the Meta Keywords and Meta Description tags in Blogger. As I was reading it, I assumed that it was published years ago, but when I looked at the date, I found that it was published just a few weeks ago. It seemed odd considering that this content was on a decent sized SEO site, but either way, I figured that this hack would be worth sharing with others who are struggling, like I was, to get their pages indexed by search engines. As you know your standard Blogger template does not allow for this feature (come to remember, I don't even think it allowed for and Meta tags at all!), but I believe that it is the main reason why my post pages are indexed within five minutes after being published, instead of the weeks that it took before (if they got indexed at all).
At this point you might be asking, "Do Meta tags actually matter anymore?". A hot topic right now all over the SEO websites and Webmaster forums is that search engines, especially Google, do not pay attention to the Meta Keywords or the Meta Description tags anymore. While I do feel that the Meta Keyword tag is being left in the dust, I find it hard to believe that the Meta Description tag is also being overlooked and thrown out with the trash. . It really goes back to the old adage "better safe than sorry". I mean, it could be true, the Meta Description tag might not count for anything when it comes to placement in search results, but why chance it, as I do not think it could hurt your position at all.
The example below shows the general Meta Keyword and Meta Description tags as you would normally apply them inside the [head] and [/head] section of your template. If you have at least taken the step to add these, then this should look somewhat familiar:[meta content='these are the keywords for this post, keyword, keyword, keyword, keyword, keyword, keyword, keyword' name='keywords'/]
[meta content='this is the description of this web page, this is what will show up beneath the page title in search engines' name='description'/]
The problem with leaving it like this (which actually is better then nothing) as I mentioned above, is in the Blogger program, more specifically the format in which the data is sent to a requesting browser. A blogger template must be set in an i-frame, which means that the program has created one standard "outer frame" template for your entire blog which displays items such as the header, the sidebar, the footer, etc,. When one of your individual post pages is called upon by a user, the i-frame data along with the corresponding "post" data is blasted out from the Google server. In working in this manner, your "static" content, such as a sidebar link widget, does not have to be saved say ten, twenty, or a thousand different times, depending on the number of pages offered in your blog. The key then is to force the search engine spiders and robots to recognize code which does not allow it to apply the same basic format for every page of your blog. The hack, which is not really even a hack, is probably already used in other areas of your template. When I thought of giving it a try, I was saying to myself, "there is no way it is this easy, is there?".
What you are going to do is simply make use of the [b:if] and [/b:if] HTML tags, which in English basically tell the page crawlers "if you see this, then you use this". Now, unfortunately this needs to be done for every page that you want the tags on, so if you have hundreds of pages this may take some time. If you are just starting out then you're in luck, as you can just make it part of your routine when you add a page. I added this hack when I was around 40 pages deep, which took a little time, but it has been well worth it because I believe it is the sole reason why my pages show up in the Google Search Engine within five minutes of being published (my content can't be that good, come on). What you are going to do is add the following red section (see below) around your Meta Keywords and Meta Description tags, which you possibly already have added to your template at an earlier time. Here is the way my Meta Keywords and Meta Description tags appear in my template, the first set being for my Home page (Index page), and the second is for the page you are reading right now.[b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://www.example.com/examplepage"']
[meta content='these are the keywords for this web page, keyword, keyword, keyword, keyword, keyword, keyword, keyword' name='keywords'/]
[meta content='this is the description of the web page, this is what will show up beneath the page title in search engines' name='description'/]
[/b:if]
If you want to see the hack in action, you can check the Page Source of this page right now (navigate above your browser and select 'View' and then 'Page Source' ) and look for the Meta Keywords and Meta Description between the [head] and [/head] section near the top of the code. After that, go to any other page and do the same thing and notice the different tags. So the thing to do is immediately after you publish a new page, copy the URL from your browser bar for that particular post, then paste it in between the double quotes, and dump the thing in your template! Do take close notice that there are two sets of quotes, double quotes surrounded by single quotes. Blogger may change those to the ampersand sign, or whatever it's called, once you save, but don't worry about that.
seo, blogger, meta tags, hack, search
Anyway, as you will notice I tend to favor the quotes of the older, veteran poker players, instead of the brash, young players of today's online world!
10. A king can do no wrong, unless it runs into an ace.
9. Dear Lord, help me to break even. I need the money.
8. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half an hour at the table, then you are the sucker.
7. There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker. The upper class knows very little about it. Now and then you find ambassadors who have sort of a general knowledge of the game, but the ignorance of the people is fearful. Why, I have known clergymen, good men, kind-hearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a "flush." It is enough to make one ashamed of the species.
6. I've often thought, if I got really hungry for a good milk shake, how much would I pay for one? People will pay a hundred dollars for a bottle of wine; to me that's not worth it. But I'm not going to say it is foolish or wrong to spend that kind of money, if that's what you want. So if a guy wants to bet twenty or thirty thousand dollars in a poker game, that is his privilege.
5. You cannot survive without that intangible quality we call heart. The mark of a top player is not how much he wins when he is winning but how he handles his losses. If you win for thirty days in a row, that makes no difference if on the thirty-first you have a bad night, go crazy, and throw it all away.
4. It's hard work. Gambling. Playing poker. Don't let anyone tell you different. Think about what it's like sitting at a poker table with people whose only goal is to cut your throat, take your money, and leave you out back talking to yourself about what went wrong inside. That probably sounds harsh. But that's the way it is at the poker table. If you don't believe me, then you're the lamb that's going off to the slaughter.
3. It never hurts for potential opponents to think you’re more than a little stupid and can hardly count all the money in your hip pocket, much less hold on to it.
2. When a man with money meets a man with experience, the man with experience leaves with money and the man with money leaves with experience.
Let me know what what you think and post some of your favorites if you want! Thanks for takin' the time to check out my list. Time for a 40 of King Cobra and some action on the virtual felt! Peace.
Read about Stu Ungar in Wikipedia!
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