1. Title Tag
This is the format: phrase one – phrase two – phrase three – phrase four
The divider doesn’t really matter. Dash (-) or pipe (|) or whatever.

a. if there is a brand name that you carry, use it. For example, “Celestial Seasonings”. If this is a well known brand name, include it first in your Title tag. Brand names instill a sense of security for your customers.

b. Limit length to 65 characters (including spaces) or less

c. When you’re thinking about what keyword phrases to use, put yourself in your potential customer’s shoes. What keyword phrase(s) would they search for to find your site.

To get to the Title tag in Miva Merchant, click on Products or Categories on the left, then click on the Edit button for a product or category, then click on Titles at the top.
It’s under Browser Window Title.

The latest idea is to not repeat the same word or words in the same tag. For example, do not do this in your Title tag: “loose leaf tea – green loose leaf tea – black loose leaf tea”.
Do this instead: “loose leaf tea – green – black”.
My tests concluded that this technique did not work on a short-term basis.

2. Meta Description:
In Miva Merchant, this is found under Meta-Tags when you click on a product or category’s edit button.
The product meta description should be around 100/150 characters and it should contain keyword phrase(s) potential customers would use to find that product or category.

There should be some matches between a Title tag, the Meta Description tag, the Meta Keyword tag, and the regular product or category or page description.
In other words, the same keyword phrase(s) should be in all four places.

If the Title tag includes ‘Celestial Seasonings’, so should the Meta-Description, so should the regular product or page or category description.

The Meta Description looks like this: The Tea Company carries a wide variety of loose leaf tea including Celestial Seasonings tea.

3. Meta Keywords:
The Meta Keyword tag should include keywords and keyword phrases that pertain to the page it’s on.
Do not use single words. For example: tea, loose, bag.
The Meta Keyword tag looks like this: Celestial Seasonings tea, loose leaf tea, full leaf tea

When you go to a search engine, such as google.com and search for something, you are not really searching the web. You are searching their copy of the web. Google, and other search engines, make a copy of the internet and store it in their database.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is making the website as easy for search engines to index (store) and crawl as possible. For example, some search engines do not like (or can not crawl) characters in URLs such question marks (?) or ampersands (&). Some search engines do not like the same keyword phrase listed more than X times on a page. Some HTML or CSS tags are more important to search engines than others. Search engine optimization is very involved and if it’s not done right, your site could be penalized by the search engines with a lower ranking.

Please contact me for an estimate or if you have any questions.

Imagine bandwidth as being different sizes of garden hoses.

Size 2 is larger than size 1. Size 3 is larger than size 2.
You have size 1.

Now think of visitors to your website (traffic) as being an amount of water coming through the garden hose.

Size 1 garden hose can handle so much water coming through it.
But somebody at the water spigot turned up the water so more water is coming through it.

Size 1 garden hose can only handle so much water.
Only so much water can come through a size 1 garden hose.
That’s what your website is going though.
You need to upgrade your garden hose (bandwidth) to allow for more water (visitors or traffic to your website).