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The Meta Description Dilemma

Meta descriptions are behind-the-scenes page elements that cause a lot of conflict. There are two extreme SEO positions related to the meta description that are often debated and lead to more confusion among people who are webmasters and not professional SEOs.

The first extreme position is the meta descriptions aren’t necessary. The second extreme position is that they are always necessary and should conform to a specific keyword-based format, length, etc.

The “not necessary” position is based on the premise that Google does not always use the meta description. That’s a true statement. Sometimes Google takes content from the page itself to use for the search snippet and ignores the meta description altogether. However, sometimes it uses the meta description and that’s why this position is so destructive.

The second position is equally destructive simply because any page of content can rank for several hundred search queries, some of which are beyond predictability by the person writing the page. Google will most definitely not use your meta description for every one of those search queries.

So what should you do about your meta description?

First, you need to understand that it won’t be used for every possible search query. Still, that doesn’t mean you can’t write a meta description that targets a particular keyword (preferably the primary keyword of your web page) and give it a good call to action.

The primary purpose for the search snippet, which your meta description has the potential to become, is to get the searcher to click on the search result and visit your page. Optimize your meta descriptions for search, but give them a good call to action.

On-Page SEO Getting More Difficult

If you haven’t noticed, on-page SEO is getting more difficult all the time. There are several reasons for this.

No. 1, Google tweaks its search algorithm multiple times a day. On a low-tide day they could update their algorithms 50 times in one day. They’ve been known to make such tweaks a couple of hundred times in a single day. That’s way too many updates for anyone to keep up with. You can’t track them all.

Another thing, the on-page factors themselves keep growing. It used to be that all you had to do was write a page of keyword-based content, give it some meta tags, and build a few links. Today, you need to do a lot more than that. In fact, if you do today what you did in 1998, then you are likely not to get your pages ranked because you are likely spamming the search engines and they don’t like that.

To top it off, there are new data pieces that not all webmasters use but that Google sometimes uses to give certain pages a boost in rankings. These include schemas and structured data.

Whilst these are not necessary for on-page SEO, they can be helpful. However, simply using them isn’t going to guarantee that your pages rank better. There are still more than 200 ranking factors that Google looks at to rank its pages for any particular search query.

SEO is an ever-changing game. The best that you can do is experiment, test, and measure everything you do. If you get stuck, try consulting with a professional SEO.

Are You A Link Spammer?

Surprisingly, after all that has been written about link spam (on this blog and all over the web), there are still a lot of people who will spend time and money creating links that won’t benefit them in the least. In fact, many of them could hurt their business.

Here are 5 common link spam tactics that can hurt you. Avoid them at all costs.

1. Blog comments – This one is the most obvious. How many times have you seen a comment on your own blog that had nothing to do with the content of your post? And it included a perfectly constructed anchor text link in the middle of it? Don’t do this. It doesn’t work.
2. Forum comments – Many people still think you can join a forum and immediately start spamming the boards. If the forum administrator doesn’t discipline you for doing it, it’s not a good forum. Don’t spam the forums. Add value instead.
3. Articles – Articles are a good way to boost your reputation and present yourself as an expert. They can also provide great inbound links to your website. But low quality articles sent to article directories just to get a link are old hat SEO that no longer works. Save your money.
4. Social bookmarking – Social bookmarking has value if done correctly, but all those social bookmarking sites that were started just to provide webmasters with inbound links are now no longer useful. You’re wasting your time.
5. Web directories – Like article marketing, at one time Web directories provided high value links. Today, very few directories are good link building opportunities. The ones that are probably are specialty niche directories and/or provide paid listings.

Not all link building techniques are link spam. Find the good opportunities and leave the bad ones alone.

What Is Content ‘Quality’?

Content. Everyone thinks they know what it means. And when you add the word “quality” to it, then you are changing the very nature of the content. Everyone still thinks they know what it means.

So what is meant by “quality content?”

In the old days of search engine optimisation, many webmasters figured out that you could rank higher in the search engines if you counted your keywords. Keyword density became a buzzword and webmasters used it as a measure of quality. But it didn’t really produce quality. It simply produced rankings.

Later, link building became a common practice. SEOs and webmasters learned that you could focus on building lots of links. Then you had to make sure you got the right links from the right websites. And you had to make sure your anchor text was just right. Over time, the search engines have forced webmasters to change how they sought search engine rankings. All of the changes in search engine policy have been geared toward one end: Quality.

So what is quality then?

In a word, quality as it pertains to content is how you write about your topic with your reader in mind. Quality content is content that reaches your audience with a message they are interested in reading. If they like it, it’s quality. And it doesn’t matter how many keywords or links you have pointing to it.

The SEOs job is to ensure that your content is quality content that seeks out the best opportunities to rank for key terms you want to rank for. The practices have changed. The nature has not.

What If Facebook Had A Search Engine?

A new study shows that Facebook might have 22% of the search market if it were to launch a search engine today. I’m not so sure about that.

The numbers are predicated upon a survey of respondents and include an aggregate of the responses from three categories:

• Definitely
• Probably
• Don’t know

I don’t think you can count “don’t know” as a positive. I’d discount those numbers and just use the first two categories of responses. That would only put the Facebook search engine at 17% of the market, still enough to be the second most used search engine online.

Interestingly, 27% of the respondents with no search engine loyalty said maybe they’d use the Facebook search engine, “but only if it was better than Google and Bing.” Duh.

I think the reality is that no one would use it unless they receive search results at least as good as Google and/or Bing.

Nevertheless, taking these survey results at face value, what would happen to search engine optimisation if Facebook did have a search engine? Obviously, they’d have to make their website crawlable so that it could be indexed by the search engine. Would that mean all the walls would fall down? Would Google then be allowed to crawl Facebook or would Google’s bot be blocked? How would searchers feel about that?

This study actually brings up a lot more questions for me. It’s not easy to build a successful search engine. Just ask Yahoo! and Ask. Heck, just look at how long it took Bing to come up with something that was halfway competitive with Google.

So what do you think would happen if Facebook had a search engine?

Are Words On The Page Optimization?

What do SEOs mean by “on-page optimisation?” Does that refer to the words, the images, the links, or what?

In a sense, it refers to all of the above. But how much optimisation do you think each of those elements contributes to the page overall? As an experiment, try building a page from scratch without using words on the page at all. Start with a sidebar full of widgets. Then add a few links. Next, add a video and an image or two. Between each new element that you add, wait a couple of weeks to see how adding that element affects your rankings.

My bet is that each element might help a little bit, but when it comes to adding actual words on your page, that will help a lot. The best on-page optimisation in the world is about your word content. Everything else is ancillary.

My point here is that you can’t build a web page without words and expect it to rank very well. Sure, you might get an image to rank in the Image vertical at Google – but I doubt it. The search engines look at surrounding text to see what an image is about. Alt tags are hardly enough.

In terms of on-page optimisation, words are the bread and butter. They tell the story. They inform the search engines as to what your page is about. And the words are what earn your income for you.

When you start optimising your web pages, think very carefully about what words you want to use. Use only the best words.

Google+ Wins The SEO Battle In Social Media

Social media is a difficult beast to tame. Anyone who has ever tried it understands why. There are simply too many variables to measure all at once to gain any meaningful interpretation. But I give kudos to any company that can put together a good enough control group to make the efforts worth it. One such company did just that.

Whilst the results from this experiment aren’t perfect, there are some telling details. For instance, the conclusion that Google+ affects organic search engine results seems reasonable based on this study.

It’s not even surprising that adding new Google+ followers and getting +1s has an effect on organic search rankings, but the fact that these conclusions were drawn on the basis of 100 new followers means that it may not be completely accurate. How about gaining 1,000 new followers? Would that lead to the same results? I’d be interested in knowing.

Another interesting conclusion is that Facebook promotion delivers better organic search results than Twitter. This might have something to do with the falling out between Google and Twitter last year. But it’s worth noting that Twitter promotion still does affect search engine rankings.

However, gaining new Twitter followers has no effect on search engine rankings.

If these are the results you get from using the top social media websites individually, then think of the results you’d get by combing your social media efforts. For the best results, you should sync your Google+ promotions with your Facebook and Twitter promotions. Then, check on your search engine rankings.

Is Freshness Or Relevance More Important?

When Google returns search results for a particular search query, we hope that the most relevant search results are the ones that rise to the top. However, that is not always the case. Sometimes, freshness wins.

On the other hand, sometimes freshness loses and irrelevance wins.

SEOmoz has a great blog post about how freshness influences search results. No. 10 on the list is “Older Documents Still Win Certain Search Queries.”

I think on any given day for any given search query you will see a mix of fresh search results and highly relevant search results. Of course, we hope that even the fresh results are relevant. But we want relevance most of all.

What Google’s freshness update was supposed to have done is add the most recent web pages published that are also relevant to our search results. That’s not an easy task. Nevertheless, if the most relevant search is also the most recent, that might be a plus (especially if we are looking for the most up-to-date information). But what if the searcher is looking for information that is dated?

For instance, what if I want to know which automobile was the most popular automobile among drivers in a particular country in 1999? An article written on that topic last week might be highly relevant, but its freshness wouldn’t necessarily make it more relevant than an article written on the topic in January 2000. In fact, it might be less relevant.

In terms of search, relevance is always going to be the litmus test for any search engine. Freshness is a bonus in certain circumstances and for certain search queries. The SEOs job is to create web pages that are relevant for search queries that matter.

How To Avoid Optimisation

Google has a new sin to avoid. It’s called “overoptimisation.”

Actually, it used to be called spam. But now Google is drawing a distinction between spam and overoptimisation. At least, that’s the way it looks based on the latest search algorithm.

Google recently introduced a major algorithm update. But they didn’t give it a name. Then they did give it a name and called it Penguin. First, it was about webspam. Now, it’s about overoptimisation. If your site was delisted or you lost web rankings, it’s because you overoptimised.

To avoid the overoptimisation penalty, it’s important to understand what Google is targeting. It’s more than keywords on the page, but that is a part of it.

If you don’t want to be labeled an overoptimiser, think on these principles a while:

• Quit focusing on keyword density and just write great content.
• Stop trying to put your keyword into your domain name. Once is enough. Every folder doesn’t have to have your keyword in it.
• Quit chasing links with the same anchor text in them. Try a little link diversity.
• Don’t overoptimise your photos. Write a short alt tag, but don’t overdo it.
• It’s OK to have one or two subheads with your keywords in them, but if you do it in every subhead, then it’s obvious. Just write good headlines and subheads.

These are just a few simple ways to avoid the overoptimisation trap. Once you have a handle on what Google considers good content, you won’t even think about it.

Did You Kill Your Webspam?

Google has always tried to control webspam, albeit not altogether effectively at times. But in the last year-and-a-half the search engine has been on a real tear. Yesterday they announced a new algorithm change that will address the webspam problem once again.

Naturally they’re not releasing any specifics about the update, but they are putting webmasters on notice anyway.

In January Google targeted ads “above the fold.” Web pages that had too many ads at the top and not enough content were sent reeling from the change. Even if you have been doing everything else right, if you have too many ads at the top of your web pages, then Google considers it spam. Good-bye.

This just illustrates how much you have to stay on your toes to keep up with changes to the search engine optimisation culture. It’s not that you should. You have to. If you want to stay indexed.

SEO is not just about how you manage keywords. It’s about how you manage every aspect of your web presence. And that includes the layout of your pages. Google wants you to optimize your page real estate as well as your content language, photos and images, sidebar widgets, video content, and every other element on your web pages. Even seemingly innocent snafus can be a target for the webspam police.

Bottom line: If you don’t control your own webspam, then Google will. Pay attention to what’s going on or you’ll be zapped.