RSS Feeds: The UV SEO Series – Part Four – Meta
In part one of "The UV SEO Series", I introduced the series. In part two, I wrote about having one website address. In part three, I wrote about internal linking strategies. Today, I'm going to emphasize meta descriptions and meta tags.
What the Search Engines Index
Google, the 1000-pound gorilla in the search engine market, indexes each page of a website using an algorithm known only to Google. Through observation, however, we know that Google looks at titles wrapped in the "h" tags (h1, h2, etc.), the slugs (the unique parts of URLs), words wrapped by the strong and bold tags, and the first 100-150 characters of the content. Google pays little attention to meta keywords, drawing the keywords from the content itself. Google also pays little attention to the meta description, unless there aren't 100-150 words of content (such as only having embedded videos or images). Of course, links are followed or "nofollowed", depending on what's in the content.
Google isn't the only player in town, so it's ridiculous to place all of your search engine faith in them. Yahoo still has a decent market share and other players are out there, just waiting to fill any void.
Yahoo looks at all the ingredients that Google does and adds meta descriptions and meta keywords to the mix. When I started adding tags to my blog posts, it didn't make much of a difference. When I started using a plugin to copy each post's categories and tags to the meta keywords, it made a huge difference. I use the same plugin to copy the excerpts of 150 words to my meta descriptions.
Quantifiable Differences
Prior to concentrating on meta descriptions and meta keywords, maybe 5 percent of my traffic came from Yahoo and the rest from Google. A pie chart of the last 72 hours shows me that 73 percent comes from Google, 20 percent from Yahoo and the rest from the other search engines. I'm starting to see players like MSN/Live, Alta Vista, and even AOL poke their heads in.
Overall, since I started tracking the SERPS, Google has only garnered 67 percent of the market share as far as this blog is concerned. That's 33 percent of the searches coming from someone else. Doesn't it make sense to attract that 33 percent as well?
Manipulate the Meta
If you have control over your meta description and meta keywords, use your head and fill them in with the appropriate information. Make sure they're both related to the content. If you can't get your keywords into the first 150 characters of the content, get them into the meta description. If you CAN get them into the first 150 characters, you can simply copy the first 150 characters to the meta description and be done with it.
I have no doubt in my mind that I've hit the first page of Google and Yahoo for single keywords multiple times due using to the meta information the way it's intended to be used. This was using onsite SEO only.
Coming in Part Five
I have to take a day or two off from writing in order to take care of personal business. When I return, I plan to write about keyword placement and keyword density and how easy it really is to manipulate both.
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hi RT, more good info on seo. I only disagree with one thing… I think Google is the 10,000 pound gorilla! That said, you make a good point that there are other search engines, and it is good to diversify your activities. ~ Steve, a member of the UV minion LEGION! GO MINIONS!
Speaking of minions, I need to recruit more. I have a massive project that needs to get done and I can't do it by myself. It's impossible. The rewards will be great if I can get at least 100 minions together.
I think meta data also helps ensure you target the high paying competitive keywords if you are using Adsense. i.e. if all your research suggests term A has high traffic, and high competition on Adwords, and thus a high paying click then stuffing your meta keywords and description with that term A, you are more likely to get the value for your Adsense click.
Are you wearing a big foam finger right now, Steve?
What do you use to see your traffic, RT? I need to upgrade to get a more accurate picture.
My latest blog post: Beer Gift Baskets – Great Gifts For Any Occasion!
Mint! $30 per domain, but well worth it.
hey Tim,
Yeh, I've got a big foam finger on each hand, and I've got a box full of them for anyone who what to join the UV minion legion! GO MINIONS!
~ Steve, purveyor of US minion-made trade show display booths
PS. Something tells me I'd get more recruits if I was handing out ice cold Blue Beavers… :)
Interesting thing about meta description. If you have one, Google sometimes uses it as the snippet in search results, which is very useful. There is argument over whether the meta description itself affects SERPs, and people have conducted various tests, and the results seem to show that it does not have an effect.
This series is priceless, RT. Thanks for putting it together.
I have the All in One SEO pack for wordpress and you can put in meta keywords there. should i just be using one word or the long tail keywords like "best tropical islands in asia"? Is there a limit to how many keywords I should put into that field? I always put as many as I can think of.
My latest blog post: The Saturday City: Chiang Mai
I tried using meta tags in my blogspots and it worked. With my hosted wordpress blog right now, it's the All-in-one SEO pack that I'm using.
My latest blog post: CEBU SEO CONTEST
As of my experience Google is paying much more attention to the description meta tag than to the keywords. Many SEO people are still claiming (wrongly) that keywords meta tag is amonst the most important for the optimization. However, I only focus on the description squeezing as much information as I can to describe the page content most accurately.
This is very informative to me. I had no idea what Google was doing and why the results were so different from other search engines. I'll have to go make a few changes.
Thanks!
I think people (including myself) have a tendency to belittle the power of the description meta tag. I recently discovered on an old site I had built a few years back that I neglected to add a meta description to any of the category pages. I then proceeded to add very descriptive meta tags utilizing all of my researched and converting keywords. I checked my rankings before and then a month after adding the tags. I was amazed at the improvements in ranking position within Yahoo. The impact in Google was much less profound but the improvements in Yahoo were astounding.