Those of you who’ve been marketing on the Internet since the 1990’s will remember the hazy far off days when “meta descriptions” where SEO magic, the biggest news on the news sites was somebody called Monica and a mysterious Presidential stain on her dress, and Linux was going to take over the desktop within 12 to 18 months.

In 2010 things are different, right?  Meta descriptions are out, nobody remembers Monica – or her dress,  and Linux has taken over the desktop.

Actually, that last line is complete bollocks.  It should read nobody cares about Monica, her dress or that President and Linux-ists are still predicting the takeover of the desktop in – just another couple of years (they are lovable idiots).

A preamble on SEO Black/Grey/Blue/White.  If you read this, or any other site with similar content, looking for clues on how to game the system AND STUFF THINGS UP FOR ALL OF US then I am hoping the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits and your chooks (chickens) turn into Emus and peck your dunny (toilet) down.

But Meta Descriptions?

They’re back, in a sense.  So are meta keywords too. Not in the same way we used them in the 1990’s, but more subtle and much, much more powerful for ISV websites.

Meta Descriptions are those snippets of text you see in search results beneath a site link.  Some time back Google said they didn’t use them as a ranking factor and nobody seemed to bother anymore – except me, well, almost.  Meta Keywords are tags embedded in HTML and designed to give a search engine an anchor on which to determine what a site is about.

Search engines evolved, Google in particular, and their methods of parsing text for relevancy evolved right along with them.  It was only natural that as the SEO spammers abused Meta Descriptions and more often Meta Keywords that they’d be relegated to the scrapheap along with pure HTML websites and the “Dancing Baby”.

However a couple of things have changed of late.  Google has started Personalized Search, basically using cookies to show you content you searched and clicked last time, and CMS software such as Joomla and in particular WordPress (there are other platforms of course, but for brevity we’ll call them all CMS).

These two factors turn the table on both of these meta tools.

First – search engine results.  A page that returns a relevant, logical synopsis – genuine sizzle and not fake stuffing – via it’s Meta Description is more likely to be clicked on than those sites who don’t bother or shove a bunch of keywords in there -which mean nothing logical to humans.

Second – CMS software uses the concept of tags and categories.  Both of these, due to “pretty” or “SEO friendly” page naming are rich follows for the search engine IF the content they contain is relevant.  Robots love content and rich links.  Be nice to them, don’t abuse them and they can and do look after you in turn.

Frequently CMS software allows these pages to easily have Meta Descriptions based on their content either auto inserted from the content (best) or entered by the site owner (don’t be tempted to scam here – you’ll loose).

Tags, using plug-ins in a CMS package can be turned into Meta Keywords.  Two years of experimenting with this has paid off.  The formula is simple:

• The Page Link accurately describes the page content.

• The Meta Description accurately describes or summarizes the page content.
• The Meta Tags provide links to other relevant pages and perform a minor role as Meta Tags (requires automation for best results).  The reason here, as far as I can tell, is purely reinforcement.  On their own the Meta Tags are useless – almost.  But combined they seem to have an effect.  Valuable if inserted automaticaly from content.

You’ll notice from the above the word “relevant” is used in each bullet point.  That’s because, at the end of the day, relevancy, hard work and honesty increasingly count more in SEO – though they have always counted for something – than ever before.

In fact, these items probably make up most of the value of content rich websites to the engines.  All of my tags and meta keywords on my sites, and of course meta descriptions, are inserted automatically.  The tags, unless I specify otherwise, are checked via automation with Yahoo and scored on what people are searching for.  Often some odd ball tags/meta keywords are inserted.  But you’d be surprised at the combinations people use when searching.

Keep in mind – at all times though – that irrelevant traffic is irrelevant.  Try and constrain yourself to the people you are trying to market to.  Nobody needs bandwidth soaks from streams of disinterested clicks.

Scott Kane

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Q. What do you call an xhtml document with a spade in it’s head?
A. <head>a spade</head>

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