Meta Description is a feature inside the hidden programming of every web page. It allows 150 characters to describe your web page.
This description is read into the search engines and displayed on the Search Engine Results Page as the 2 lines of text below the website page title. Since you're probably not looking at a SERP right now, let's describe this.
The SERP shows the title of the web page as blue underlined text. Right below that, there are usually 2, sometimes 3, lines of black text, and right below the black text is a green website address. That black text is the Meta Description, and you (mostly) have control of what shows up there.
The functionality of the meta description has changed over the years, and a lot of out-dated information is still available online. In fact, when it comes to the meta description and the meta keywords there is more out-dated information online than updated and factual information.
Many new website owners will believe the majority of the information they find. One person said it, two people said it, 25 different websites said it so it must be true that meta descriptions are used for search engine ranking and optimization.
Actually, that's totally wrong and Google has published many videos to debunk the old ways where web programmers would repeat key phrases over and over again the in the descriptions.
Several years ago, it was common to see SERPs riddled with "engagement ring store, bridal ring store, engagement rings store, wedding rings, engagement rings, gold engagement rings" as web programmers tried to stuff variations of keyword phrases into the description hoping to better their ranking.
Well, Google and Bing are smarter now. That technique doesn't work. In fact, if you even try that technique, Google will notice it and instead they well take a snippet from the body of your page and use it in place of your stuffed keywords.
So what's the lesson for today?
Simply write real descriptions of what you will find on every page of your site and put those into your Meta Descriptions. Think in terms of short sales messages and use that to tell prospective customers exactly what they will find when they click.
0 Comments on Don't Stuff Meta Descriptions Like a Turkey
Post a Comment
"...serious kudos to you. We love your straight talk, pertinent information and plain language. I don't know how many industries have something of jWAG's caliber available, but I learn from the emails every day. Really, really nice work, and very appreciated." -Cheryl Herrick, Global Pathways Jewelry
BEHIND THE SCENES jWAG is Free!
There's a lot of good SEO training stuff out there, but we're the only website who use jewelry terms in our examples...
jWAG is the research and training department of JewelerWebsites.com, and we provide our online training for free. No scam, no gimmick, everything you read on jWAG
is the same SEO and online marketing techniques that we provide our paying customers.
Our Daily Golden Nugget email subscribers are occasionally offered free services so we can evaluate new SEO techniques and emerging web technologies.
A typical SEO firm will request you fill out a "quote form" before they tell you exactly what they do for you or their price. We know that
many of you guys--our readers from the jewelry industry--are cautious about your technology investments and media buying. This is why we've created jWAG, to
help you learn a little and understand what it takes to have a successful jewelry website and online marketing.
With a little SEO knowledge you can better evaluate any SEO firm before hiring them.
Will you have time to do this yourself? Maybe not, but feel free to hire your own in-house web person and give them the job of reading and using jWAG.
That will be much less expensive than hiring us or someone else.
We try to write everything on jWAG so you can easily follow without too much geek speak. All our examples are written using jewelry lexicon so you can use them directly
or copy the techniques directly without rethinking. We hope it's a great time saver.
If you do decide to throw up your hands and give up we'd hope
you give us a call, but before you do, make sure to check out your options from your POS company because they might have an easy beginner website. Another beginner
website could come from one of your jewelry vendors.
When you are ready to use the power of jWAG you should just call JewelerWebsites.com or do a Google search
for "jewelry website design" for the other experts in the jewelry website design industry.
Here are some quick links into JewelerWebsites.com: