Comments on: Be Wary of How the Engines Use your Title and Meta Description Tags

By: Affordable web hosting

Affordable web hosting — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:16:45 +0000

i noticed that you are focusing about meta title tags, but i would appreciate if you please describe the meta description tags also, i think that is also important

By: Gladstein

Gladstein — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:43:33 +0000

It may be worth noting that the meta description tag that Google and Ask are picking up is not from netflix.com. If you go to the default URL in WebBug, you’ll get hit with 2 302 redirects, ending up at one of those “you need to accept cookies” pages at http://www.netflix.com/entryTrap.html?why=cookieless That’s where they’re grabbing the meta description.

By: EmergenceMedia

EmergenceMedia — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:42:25 +0000

Rand,

Its nice to see you promoting this, as its something that needs to be heart of more.

We’ve been pushing through the concept that getting visibility on SERPs(building good content that can achive high rankings) is different than high CTR (optimizing for high CTR > getting traffic).

I think this is the role I see for SMO. While not a perfect analogy I see the following: Attractive copy that will generate buzz (building good content that people would want to spread) is different than SMO (optimizing to ensure that content travels/gets-viral easily).

By: bookworm seo

bookworm seo — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:40:14 +0000

Lol, I mentioned this to Rand in an email back in the summer. I find it entertaining to see my favourite SEO blog actually not practicing SEO. Kind of says that you can get great traffic with content and relationships and natural surfer behaviour, without caring too much about SERPs.

Note: For the Title, I think a descriptive title tag can be sufficient without having keyword stuffing. It needn’t be a coherent sentence. EG Search Engine Optimization | SEO would be fine. Welcome to SEO… isn’t really necessary.

By: kulpreet_singh

kulpreet_singh — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:39:31 +0000

sorry I meant “higher rate of traffic” can’t believe i mispelled that… shows the effects of internet culture and reduction of reading books…

By: kulpreet_singh

kulpreet_singh — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:39:07 +0000

This also relates to the post before ( I think it was on this blog, that “every page is a landing page) .. whatever pages are going to be viewed through search engines at a hire rate of traffic – Rand, do you suggest giving them a meta description or letting the SE come up with one?

Will the meta description affect the ranking if it is used in your search results?

By: randfish

randfish — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:38:04 +0000

I’ve always said that with this blog, we don’t practice what we preach, but we also get fewer than 10% of traffic through search.

With clients, though, it’s a totally different story and yes – we always use the meta descrip tag if we know it’s a page that’s going to get search traffic. For blogs or sites where there are thousands upon thousands of dynamic pages, it can sometimes be wiser to let the search engines pick out the meta description rather than writing an automated one, but anytime you can do it yourself, I believe it’s worthwhile.

By: Lisadit

Lisadit — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:37:27 +0000

MarketinInteractif, I always use the meta description tag. And where I think necassary I use different meta description tags for different pages. The meta description tag is not essential for ranking well but can really improve the click through rate from the organic listings. Letting the Search Engiens pick up the body text can sometimes be a bit of a gamble..what do you think Rand?

By: MarketingInteractif

MarketingInteractif — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:36:52 +0000

But once and for all, do you guys use the description tag? Some advocates in it’s favor, some don’t, arguing that they prefer to let te Search Engines pick up the body text instead. Yourself Rand, you’re telling people about the importance of this tag while you don’t even use it?

What are your toughts on this?

By: MarketingInteractif

MarketingInteractif — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:36:28 +0000

Wow, I guess you guys just reopen the eternal Yahoo directory issue. I guess it's good for some people and bad for others. But I tend to agree with some on the fact that it's still a very valuable link to have...