A Blog Description Google Seems to Like

Oct 282009
 

Over the past couple of years I’ve made a few posts about how to write a description meta tag. One of them, Your Description Sucks is about making sure that you write a good one, or Google will just use your content on what they think is best. The second one is, Google Wants You to Be More Specific, and that was the one that made me change how I do my own. The end results? A few days later Google was caching my posts with minutes. Continue reading »

Your Description Sucks

Oct 052009
 

Maybe I should title that, My Description Sucks. It was really about a post I made last week, A Site Without a Market Analysis. Rushing out the door after I made that post, I later found I was a little lazy in the Meta Tag Description. I knew it wasn’t the greatest of quality description, but apparently Google thought it was so bad, that it didn’t even use it! Continue reading »

Meta Power Test, Part II

Apr 102009
 

Testing to see how your meta description can improves the number of clicks you get when your site is displayed in search results. The original post, can be found here: Meta Power Test

So Far

So what has happened so far? Well the good news, the Digital Point Forum Down Post was recently cached with the new description, April 7th. It’s still ranked sixth for the keyword “digital point forum”, and it now reflects the new description. All has gone as planned so far. What do the stats say though? Have I received more than one hit from Google? Well I have gotten  three so far. Hardly a record, maybe for worse, but that is a one a day average. Far better than one hit a month, like it was getting.

Fine Tuning

So if it continues to get one hit a day, I think it’s safe to say that a good idea is to turn your description into a selling point. I want more than one click a day though, and I think I can get it. Digital Point is pretty dang popular, and doing a little SEO research the keyword phrase is getting used 140 times a day by Google. Sixth place ranking should get more than 1% of the traffic. Shouldn’t it? So I am coming up with a new description for the post, and see if it improves the odds a little more. Stay tuned for part three!

Meta Power Test

Apr 042009
 

Testing the power of Meta. Today I decided to do a little test, and as time goes on I will share the results. I’m sure many of you have heard of the forum, Digital Point. It has an Alexa rank of 240, so you can be certain millions of people have heard of it. Anyhow, a post I wrote a while back about the forum being down, ranked 10th or better for the keyword “Digital Point Forum” on Google. You could imagine I get a ton a traffic from that. Well, I don’t.

Ranking Well Doesn’t Do All the Work

Just because the post is ranking well, currently 6th, it doesn’t mean I’m going to get clicks. The title of the post is the first turn off. “Digital Point Forum Down”, I don’t think many will be clicking on that when looking for their forum. The meta description, this is what this post is about, was simply the first sentence of the post. When I made the post, I was not thinking keyword value or anything. It was simply a notice to my visitors, and I put little effort into optimizing it. The end result, poor title and description generating poor click thrus. Want to know how poor? In all of March Google analytics reported just 1 visitor to the post from the search keyword “Digital Point Forum”, even though it was a fairly popular post to my regular readers.

Getting More Clicks

So knowing I only got one click for all of March from Google for that search term is a little disappointing, but it can now make a great example. Here is how a  great description described in your meta tag can change these horrible numbers. Instead of using the first boring sentence from the post like I was, I have changed the description to say this, “Before you join the Digital Point Forum, read this”. I have turned the description into an ad. Think it will beet last months report of just one click?

Another thing to consider here is if I didn’t change that meta, and continued to not get clicks, think Google will keep ranking that post well? I think not. The race is on for me to take the opportunity, and start getting those visitors to click the free ad, I mean meta description. I’ll make a post next week on how it’s going. First I need the page to get cached again. Look for Putting Your Meta to Work Part II.

Why Meta Tags are Essential

Feb 262009
 

I was recently reading a forum post on how one of the members said meta tag are worthless, and that they are no longer using them. Boy, is that bad advice, and I was reminded of how bad that advice was when I looked at a new clients site today. It was made entirely out of flash.

If You Use Flash You Must

First, take a look at Meso Design. Their site is all flash. Keyword content? Zero. When search engines index their site, the only information that they can get are from the meta tags. So if you do things in flash, this is the only reason you need to use meta tags. I know there is a bunch of hype on how Google can scan flash, but it’s just in its infancy, and only Google can do it. Besides figuring out what a site is about though, what else does a search engine do to your site? They list it in a search result.

Do You Want Your Description or A Computer’s Description?

So take a look at Meso’s product design site again. If you were a computer what part do you think we be used as the description of the site? The logo? The green header? Who knows.

Here is what Google came up with:

googlesnap

So how did Google come up with that? It’s in the Meta. By good fortune the developers of this site included the meta tags defining the sites description and title. Key value here is that it was a description they picked, not some computers pick.

Meta Tags Make Sales

Say what? It’s true, they do. Though Meso hasn’t taken advantage of it yet, they will. If you word your description right, you can turn it into an action item. Here is an example of something that is happening to the smart webmasters out there. They rank #5 for a popular keyword, but they get more hits from Google than the #1 spot result. Why? Is their site more relevant? Nope. It’s because they have  finely tuned their page description to not just describe the page, but to get visitors to act on it. They have turned their description into and advertisement, and it’s paying way better than if they simply ranked #1. Imagine what will happen when they get ranked #1. Out performing, out performing, out performing.

A Little Sample

Their are tons of sites out there that can help you develop quality meta tags, but I thought I would at least give you an example by showing you mine. Here is mine from my usability analysis page.

<title>Usability and Design Analysis</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Want to improve your website? Get my usability and design analysis. This analysis is an easy ROI, and could substantially improve your desired visitor action.” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”usability, usability and design, improve website, return on investment, usability analysis” />
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″ />
<meta name=”Author” content=”Best Web Image” />
<meta name=”copyright” content=”Best Web Image” />

Meso Design

For those of you that skim like many of you do, you may have guessed that Meso designs websites. They do not. They are product designers.

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