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Implementing Custom Meta Descriptions in WordPress

11/30/2006 by 5 Comments

Recently, we did a post about Google’s snippets stating that out site will soon be the most read site in the SEO World. Not many people can claim that Google says that about their site.

As I pointed out in the discussion, this results from the way that Google builds it’s snippets. Google first looks to find text on your page that contains the actual user search query, or something quite close to it. If it does not find such a string of text, it will consider using an ODP description for your page (if there is one) or your meta description tag.

If Google cannot find either one of these, then it creates the best snippet it can using text it finds on your page. So then I received a link from a post by Steve Mertz where he clearly explains that the way to avoid Google using bad descriptions for your web page is to write a compelling meta description.

And Steve is right. As long as Google does not decide to build its description of your page based on the search query itself (usually because it cannot find the exact phrase), your meta description can be the message that people see about your site.

So this set me to thinking about implementing meta description tags within WordPress. Turns out that it is not easy. I went to the WordPress plugins directory and started checking out all the plugins in the “metadata” section.

I was looking for one that would allow me to custom write my own meta description. Most of the plugins don’t support this. They will auto construct the meta description from the beginning text of your post. Since I had gotten up the energy to solve the problem at all, I decided that I wanted to solve it well. This meant that I was committing to writing a custom meta description for each post.

After about an hour or so of research, I settled on Another WordPress Meta plugin. This was the only one I found that would allow me to write a custom meta description for each post. So I installed it.

Installation was easy. Operation is easy too. Just below the text for each post is a box that provides a text edit box for the meta description, and another one for meta keywords. A minute or two of extra work for each post. Piece of cake.

One downside though. If you don’t write a custom meta description the plugin will use the same meta description as you have for the home page for your blog. Great to have a fallback that is probably a decent description of the blog as a whole, but it potentially adds to duplicate content concerns.

In addition, it automatically implements this meta description on all your historical posts. So I spent a couple of hours today going through all my old posts writing a custom description for them. But what the hell, when you get around to addressing problems like these, you might as well address it completely.  Probably means that I will soon lose that great description from Google soon though …

UPDATE: I received a comment from Uberdose (see below), the publisher of “Another WordPress Meta Plugin” that they have removed the feature of automatically using the home page post on all of the historical posts, thus eliminating the duplicate content problem I eluded to above.  This is a great improvement on this tool, making it even better.

Filed Under: Blog, Metatags, SEO, Wordpress

Microsoft bCentral not accepting new submissions

11/28/2006 by 2 Comments

Barry Schwartz picked up that Microsoft bCentral is no longer accepting new registrations. This is definitely a shame, as it has always been a good directory to get listed in. Microsoft is now referring all small business customers to the Microsoft Live.com site.

As Barry points out, Microsoft is allowing all existing customers to sustain their existing service. One wonders how long that will last, however.

Filed Under: Microsoft, SEO

“The most read site in the SEO World”

11/28/2006 by 1 Comment

We are truly grateful to Google for declaring that our site “will soon be the most read site in the SEO world”. What am I smoking you say? Well check it out here:

Google Search Result Snippet

Thanks Google!

OK, so more seriously, how did this happen? Clearly it has something to do with the way that Google assembles it’s snippets. The link that comes up for this search points to the home page of our blog.

The user query is “seo temple”. Google cannot find that phrase on the page it has matched up with the query, and there is no meta description tag, so it tries to assemble a snippet from the text it finds on the page. For some reason Google picked the sentence out of our post about Danny Sullivan, Barry Schwartz, and Chris Sherman’s new site, Search Engine Land.

It’s a fascinating demonstration of how snippet assembly works!

Filed Under: Search Engine Algorithms, SEO

Interview with Vertical Search Engine Pioneer Grant Ryan

11/27/2006 by 2 Comments

Recently, we had the chance to speak with Eurekster’s Grant Ryan. One of the most interesting topics of our discussion was Grant’s description of the innovative contextual advertising model implemented by Eurekster. This model is designed to take advantage of the context information that is inherent in the design of each Swicki (Eurekster’s name for their vertical search engines). You can read the full interview transcript here. This post will discuss the impact of Eurekster’s advertising model.

What Eurekster has done is to allow advertisers to decide what Swickis they want their ads to show up within. In the interview, Grant provides an example about a jigsaw puzzle Swicki. When users know that they are in a vertical search engine focused on jigsaw puzzles, they begin to simplify their search queries – they type “dogs” instead of “dog jigsaw puzzles”. This is great for users because they simplify their search queries and get better results at the same time.

In addition, because advertisers have matched up their ads with certain Swickis, the ads are more contextually accurate as well. Unlike keyword based ad systems, which will see the search phrase “dogs” and present possibly irrelevant ads (about, say dog food, or dog accessories), Swickis match their ads very well. Furthermore, advertisers can focus on finding contextually relevant sites, instead of the rather low-level task of defining hundreds of keywords. See the interview for some more detailed information on how this works with Swickis.

When you start thinking about this, it begins to seem like an essential component of the process. For optimal results in vertical search engines, the embedded ads also need to be relevant. Without this type of context matching, the ads will in fact be less relevant. This is bad for advertisers (low click-through), bad for users (they learn to pay even less attention to ads, and so, of course, bad for publishers. The system Eurekster has put into place solves the problem rather nicely.

Since this is one of the first things users of vertical search engines see, and it’s integral to monetizing search, we think that other search engines getting into customized and vertical search will be compelled to solve this problem as well. They will need to get their advertisers to match up their ads with vertical search engines.

This may eventually lead to a somewhat “virtuous cycle”, where ads get more relevant, making them more useful to users, more valuable to advertisers, and more profitable for publishers. Interestingly, though, whether and how the incumbents do this remains to be seen. Such a new model seems like a rather radical change away from the immensely popular (and immensely profitable) keyword-based pay-per-click model — a move that search engines may not be quick to want to make.

While Eurekster remains a small player in the search engine space, other vertical search engine players will be looking at what they have done to solve these types of problems. They have built their service to a level where they have a serious volume of searches (500,000 per day according to Grant) by solving the types of problems outlined above.

Filed Under: Eurekster, SEO

Using the NoScript Tag

11/22/2006 by 9 Comments

While I was at WebmasterWorld, I had a webmaster come up to me and ask me about the NOSCRIPT tag. Where this tag gets used is for those sites that have Javscript menus, and that don’t provide an alternate text based navigation scheme. These sites end up cutting off search engines from portions of those sites. In addition, users who have browsers that do not support Javascript also can’t use the site effectively either.

One possible solution is to use a NOSCRIPT tag. Using this tag, you can include the navigation links in text form, making them accessible to those users (and crawlers) not able to read Javascript.

But unfortunately, like so many great potential ideas, there are serious problems with this approach. It originates with the fact that this has been used be spammers as a way of stuffing unrelated links and content on a page. The fact that the NOSCRIPT content is not seen by most users would make it a way to hide content.

The result is that the search engines cannot really trust the content found within a NOSCRIPT tag. Here is a forum thread at WebmasterWorld where Brett Tabke says that NOSCRIPT content links do not pass Page Rank. He also indicates that any content within the NOSCRIPT tags may not even be indexed.

Bottom line: It’s a great idea, but it doesn’t fly. Make sure you have text navigation that reaches every point on your site. If you must use a Javascript menu, then make sure you also have a text navigation path as well.

Filed Under: SEO

MSN Punishing Reciprocal Links

11/21/2006 by 1 Comment

A fresh report from Barry Schwartz reveals that Microsoft is now actively banning sites for engaging in link exchanges with non-relevant sites. Fascinating.

As Barry also indicates, Google simply discounts these links, making them a waste of your time and effort. In addition, we learned during the BigDaddy update, that Google also punishes sites for whom a large portion of their links come from link exchanges. What Yahoo does is less clear.

But in any event, the message is clear. Don’t waste your time with this stuff. Not only do search engines consider it spam. They will punish you for it. Time to create great content and get creative. Learn how to earn the link. Produce great content. Find the people who value it, and get them to link to you.

Filed Under: linkbuilding, SEO
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