How long for google to updating Meta tags description

Google crawls your website periodically, but it depends on whether you have setup the below

(A) Have you submitted a sitemap to google?
(B) Have you put the google tracking code on all of your pages?

hi there,
what is a sitemap? and i am unaware where we would put a tracking code.
The site was submitted to google, yahoo etc before my time here and i am sure no one knows any of the above.
please advise,
thanks

ok so we havnt submitted a site map and we doing have the tracking code in the HTML. please can you advise if the new description and keywords will be picked up by the google spider.
thanks

I can't say with certainty , as it all depends on how easily your website can be found by google. This is not an exact science and it takes time for you to be found. I would suggest you setup the tracking code and sitemap as a starter. make sure your website is fully optomised for keyword, met tags, page titles etc. Once all this is done you can view the hits within your google account and then see how well it is performing. Then if you make changes, see how well they are doing, but doing what what I have suggested first is a much quicker way for google to find you, otherwise only if your website is receiving lots and lots of hits will you be found..

thanks, if i search for a string of text in one of the pages it shows that page in google so i imagin that google can see every page but i will go ahead and create a site map. is a site map just a list of every link on our website?

yes the sitemap is a list of every page. You will have to create a google account first, and then submit the sitemap. Google can see the page as you have suggested, but having the code in each page just increases the chance of your page been found when a person does a search on the web, and the text you have on your page appears as part of their search criteria.

thanks, is there any free software or sites that will create a site map for me in xml format?
thanks

Not aware of any, but I did one for my website, and saved in the following format in a text file:

http://www.yourdomainname.com
http://www.yourdomainname.com/aboutus.aspx
http://www.yourdomainname.com/contactus.aspx 

etc...

All I do now is add to the text file and then resubmit by loggin into the account. The xml is possibly quicker, but I have to look into how to do that..

thanks,
I have created and submitted my sitelist which was sucessful.
i have added the google tracking code in every page on my website. in google analtics i have a yellow triangle warning under the status which says tracking unknown.
is this because it has just been done?
thanks

yes give it maybe 24 hours to update their systems. Basically the google crawler when it finds your code and page will remove this and start pulling in information

dhwake,
thanks for this. I know understand that anchor text and backlinks are the main points which rank your site higher.
but i am confused where i can post anchor text for my site for e.g. lets say i was an electrition the anchor text would be "london electrition" and point to www.myelectritionsite.com, without it looklink like spam?
thanks

Bertling,

You're right they are important, and part of the reason it is so important is because they are hard to control - it is not as easily manipulated as onpage content.  If the link is just www.domain.com, it doesn't look spammy - the majority of links either look like this or only have the company name as anchor text.  

It would actually look spammier if all of your backlinks had highly optimized anchor text; this would mean that you control pretty much all of the links that are pointing to your site so they really aren't someone else saying your site is valuable.

That being said, you should still try and get good anchor text where you can, but I wouldn't not pursue a link because you can't get good anchor text.

dhwake,

Thanks for your reply I will split the points if that is ok. But please can you answer a few other questions I have regarding anchor text and how to get it.

Lets assume I am an electrician. I have a website promoting my business and what I do. I also create a section of helpful news articles/DIY guides to also help the technically minded public related too electrics.

I make helpful articles on blog websites regarding this topic and at the bottom I have text - For more articles and DIY's please visit my "electricians" website. Which will be at http://www.myelectritionsite.com/articles.htm.
 
Now this will make an anchor text key word "electrician" hyperlink too http://www.myelectritionsite.com/articles.htm 
Will this anchor text count as a backlink even though my website is http://www.myelectritionsite.com which has a default page of index.htm? Or will it only count as a backlink too "http://www.myelectritionsite.com/articles.htm" which is not the main page promoting my business?

Also if my company name was sparks electricians and I used "sparks electricians" as anchor text would the key word google sees be "sparks electritions" or either or "sparks" and  "electricians" as a valid key word.

My idea for having a DIY/Article section on my corporate site is aimed to get other users on forums etc to link back to my site to articles that they find useful etc. In turn making hassle free backlinks.

I would appreciate your feedback and comment.

Hey Bertling,

That sounds like a good idea; be careful about which content you put where - meaning, you don't want to give your best content away and put it on other people's sites, but at the same time you need good articles to drive content to your site.

If you do anchor text as "electricians"  for domain.com/articles, the anchor text counts for the site, giving search engines an idea of what the content on the site is about, but it only really applies to that one page - not directly to the homepage.  I would probably give this a little more context and use the anchor text "electrician resources" or "electrician articles".  I would also recommend adding a geographic qualifier to the term electrician (for your homepage), because you are really only looking for clients in one area - so if you worked in Boston, I would target the keyword "Boston Electricians". I would really just find a way to put this in the article some how, preferably towards the top.

If you company name is sparks electricians, both of these words will "count" and contribute, both by them selves and as a phrase.

Let me know if you have anymore questions

points awarded!
how do you mean regarding a geographic qualifier? do you mean this to be a part of the anchor text? or just text in each article?
thanks

right, I would use "boston electrician" as anchor text

i understand.
To summarize am I correct to say that backlinks and good anchor text is the main thing that search engines look at the rank one site higher than the other. Then the meta title and description and page content etc?

That is pretty accurate.

I like to think of it kind of like a pyramid, where you have quality content on the bottom, and then your on page elements like page titles, H1 tags... in the middle, and then links on the top.  Links are really what drive rankings, but they need a foundation of content and good on page optimization.

Make sense?

yes indeed! thanks a lot for your help. Bit of a personal question but Im assuming you have a website. Using these techniques how does it rank with your competitors?
 

Bertling,

I have a website, but I don't really put a lot of work into it. People who I've helped they have implemented similar strategies have definitely helped, but how aggressive you need to be with link building really depends on the market/competition.