(Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes)
Sometimes, you visit a website, and you just know within minutes: this Real Off Grid Living thing could go big. Very big. That’s I how felt when I met the Craw family. Marshall, Jackie, the kids and their animals make their home off-the-grid in the Lake Chelan valley (in Washington’s Cascade Mountains). Marshall designed and operates both the home power system, and a wireless network serving their home office and many other people in the Lake Chelan region.
Do search engines love your article descriptons?
-by Marshall Craw
Did you know about the “hidden” contents of all your WordPress web pages? These hidden contents are called meta tags and are not displayed in the page, but rather are food for search engines to digest your page. Three important meta tags are title, description, and keywords. When Google displays your page as a search result, the title and description are used.
The description, or SEO description, can be used in one of three ways and is limited to 150-160 characters:
- load it up with keywords, and phrases to compliment the other “keyword” meta tag,
- Write a short teaser copy to draw people into reading your content.
- Both, that is, teaser copy with keywords for the article or page.
The third option takes time and creativity, while the human benefit of 2 is a safe choice. Option 1, may help SEO traffic initially, but is a poor long term choice.
There are several SEO plug ins for WordPress, and I chose the ‘All In One SEO’ plugin to manage this. To see these values as a search engine sees it, you can view the page source code and decipher it OR, you can use my quick tip.
I. View your page as a human
Copy the exact URL of an existing page then paste it into a Google search page.
II. View your page as Google
Paste the exact URL into a Google search, and it will display what your read title and description is. In this example the SEO description is, ” Our experience with several generators over the last 11 years, with a surprise favorite.”
Limitation: This only works for your current pages that have been indexed by Google recently. If you want to make changes and see them a minute later you’ll need to learn about viewing the page source. (I believe Dr WordPress does this elsewhere.)
Want to spend some SEO quality time with your website? Just run through the two step process above, to see your site as a search result. When you see the larger picture of your site like this, you may have a better feel for writing teaser copy with keywords for your site. This time is well spent and Google and others will thank you with more visitors!
Marshall’s Interests include alternative power generation, Linux, and caring for cats, dogs, llamas, sheep, goats and chickens (with family help). Drop by at http://www.genverters.com to sign up for the Craw family list of tips for making your off grid move!
Marshall, thanks for sending this over. It fits perfectly with the all the SEO articles already published.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..How Julie Became Successful Without Even Trying =-.
I always love SEO tips! So happy Dave invited you to guest post, Marshall. Looks like a simple yet effective strategy to apply. I have tested a few, most results returned with the starting paragraphs of the post itself, a few from the internal linking to that exact URL. Got to work on some keywords before hitting that publish button. Thanks for the heads up.
@wchingya
Social/Blogging Tracker
.-= Ching Ya´s last blog ..Art Of Communicating in Social Networks =-.
Ching Ya, I hope you check out Marshall’s blog. It’s pretty amazing where they live, and how they take of so much of everything by themselves.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..How Julie Became a Published Writer (And you can, too) =-.
Just stumbled across your blog for the first time and I see I need to read most of your posts, thanks for that wealth of information! And thanks for mentioning the “All In One SEO” plugin!
.-= CrisisMaven´s last blog ..Economic Musings II: The Euro as a Basket Case =-.
Crisis, glad to meet you.
Took a look through your article on how China may be cooking the books. All that was new information to me. Thanks for digging it up.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..How a 9 Day Denial of Service Attack Affected Blog Traffic =-.
Marshall,
That’s a great and simple tip. I’ve tried to imagine what Google would display, and it never occured to me to just put the url in and search it. Thanks!
This is well timed because I plan to spend some time going back through and improving my metadata on all my old posts. Since I post less than daily, I will probably just make it a point to put some quality time into spiffing up 1 old post and I’ll catch up to myself after a while.
.-= Carlos Velez´s last blog ..Conscious Me vs. TheInfoPreneur: The $10 Prize =-.
Carlos, it’s good to stay up with this chore as you go. I’ve gone back through a bunch of my articles to fix them, it’s really tedious.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Carlos Throws Down, and Closed Means Closed. Yep, the Week in Review =-.
Matching the description with keywords and tags isn’t something I have thought of, or paid attention to. In fact, I usually race through this step once I finish my post. I need to change up my process so that I take some time to focus on this.
.-= Deacon´s last blog ..Poser Skates and Woodblock Prints =-.
This is part of why I do that Week in Review. The blurbs are all taken from the SEO Description for each article. Forces me to write them.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..World Class Copywriting: Are there Bird droppings on your catapult? =-.
that is genius. I’m copping that.
You don’t a meta description field on your single post pages at the moment. If you’re seeing it in your editor, it’s getting dropped somewhere.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..World Class Copywriting: Are there Bird droppings on your catapult? =-.
Thanks for that Marshall; useful tip, quick and easy to follow through on. I’ll be doing a bit of that tomorrow :)
Wow! Just another informative post. I am just wondering though, why is it that every time I copy-paste a permalink on Google search- I am seeing exactly the meta description of my blog without any excerpt from the contents. Other blogs like WIAW don’t.
.-= Cebu Tech Blogger´s last blog ..Yahoo Messenger Pingbox for Blogs and Websites =-.
I don’t bother with “crafting” meta tags. I just make genuine web pages and titles usually fit the content. I think this is one of those SEO factors that are best left alone as big SE’s will either ignore them or penalize for over optimazation.
.-= Anne´s last blog ..My Fast and Dirty Fix for Coming Up with a Good Post Topic =-.
Good point, Anne.
Which is why I recommend writing the meta description as a teaser for human readers.
Entice them out of the SERPs with a 160 characters of well-written copy.
Actually, I just like seeing what kind of copy I can write in 160 characters. Good practice for bullet points. I’m eccentric that way.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Carlos Throws Down, and Closed Means Closed. Yep, the Week in Review =-.
This post was amazing. I just typed our URL into Google and the information it brought up was all about Charity Choice (one of our least used and leased favoured donation methods!) because there is a Charity Choice ‘donate now’ button near the top.
But how do I fix this? I understand how and where to put meta data for individual posts (although need to go back and add it all now I know what and where it goes :oops:) but where does it go for the main index page?
Thanks :)
.-= Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..Legislation for a weapon? You can help! =-.
What, exactly, is your question? If you can be really specific, I might be able to answer it!
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Consistency – A 7th Characteristic of Trust Building (Everyone can do this) =-.
Really specific? … hmm, I’m not so great at that. You know how girls can be at giving directions right? ;)
But seeing as I would really like to fix it, I’ll give it a shot …
For each of my blog posts, I’m starting to do what you say to do in your ebook. So I’m adding meta title, keywords and description. I’m not sure if this is working right but it’s still early days. I’m assumming it will take time for Google to cache stuff.
But what I’m more concerned about is the SEO for the index page. Typing ‘Give A Brick’ into Google, we’re at number 1 (no surprise there, it’s our name ;)) but I don’t want an advert for Charity Choice to be what folks see when they find us. I’d rather they read a sentence about the charity.
So what I was wondering was where do I change the SEO information for the index page?
.-= Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..Legislation for a weapon? You can help! =-.
Ah… If you’re using All In One SEO you need to set that in the administration page for that plugin.
Thesis theme has a similar capability, I’m sure most other premium or highly respected themes under active development do as well.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..How a 9 Day Denial of Service Attack Affected Blog Traffic =-.
I have thesis. I deactivated all in one SEO because I read somewhere that it and thesis couldn’t play nicely together.
Will have a look for it in admin as you suggest.
Thanks :)
.-= Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..Legislation for a weapon? You can help! =-.
@eleanor: Look for “Home Page Meta” on the Thesis Options page.
Also, Thesis defers to All In One SEO, which is a good thing, because AIOS is theme-independent.
For Thesis 1.5.1, you can see this in
lib/classes/head:I’ll try to remember to dig out line numbers later.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Carlos Throws Down, and Closed Means Closed. Yep, the Week in Review =-.
When it comes down to quickly publishing your blog posts/pages, I think this is a key area that is often overlooked — or that many WordPress users are unaware of.
In addition to using the meta tags, I’ve also found that WordPress tags themselves are great search engine food too — especially when they are keyword rich. :)
I have to grit my teeth and make myself do this. It’s not just about shoving a description into the form field, I try really hard to write something enticing readers to click into the article.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Saturday Morning Surfing: How’s Your Blog Traffic Lately? =-.
One great thing about Carlos’ pre-writing challenge is that I forced myself to write 160 character (or less) teasers for my challenge posts. I can use them for the updates for the challenge but I’m also going to use them as the meta description.
.-= Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..Legislation for a weapon? You can help! =-.
Heh… Carlos is reading the same book!
Cool. Better he’s reading it faster than me :roll:
.-= Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..Legislation for a weapon? You can help! =-.
I find it *impossible* to write teasers after I complete a post. The pre-writing gives me a chance to do it with a fresher brain and more of an outside perspective a few days later. At least that’s the plan.
Doolin convinced me of the importance of well-written teasers with his fabulously interlinked articles on the subject. I am trying to work hard to make it a well executed part of my posting process, and not a dirty, hateful chore.
.-= Carlos Velez´s last blog ..The Law Of Attraction Trinity: Creation =-.
@carlos: http://website-in-a-weekend.net/building-traffic/read-seo-metadata/#comment-7036
@doolin: sometimes your methods amuse me
.-= Carlos Velez´s last blog ..Coming Clean & Transparent: You Need A Story Of Success In Progress =-.
I’ve just starting being serious about these. I’m testing out the Scribe (paid) plugin too, which gives me specific SEO tips for posts. Don’t think I’ll keep it past a month or two as it’s not really what I want, but one thing it does that I love is give you an instant view of what Google will display when the page comes up in search engines. It really helps me to write the meta description and optimize the title when I see it like that!
And Marshall, I love your website! My aunt/uncle/cousin lived off grid in a solar village in the Northern Territory in Australia when I was growing up and I visited several times. I grew up and live in Melbourne, Australia, and didn’t grow up off-grid but we grew most of our vegetables and fruit and had chooks for eggs. I’d very much like to get back to that, and to being as close to off-grid as I can manage. Unfortunately it’s not snow and cold but bushfires which are a big danger down here, but I still hope it could be do-able one day!
Cheers,
Ricky
.-= Ricky Buchanan´s last blog ..Accessibility and the iPad: First Impressions =-.
Chooks? Gotta Google me some chooks.
Yeah, Marshall is rockin’ it up there. He stopped by here a few months ago, left a comment. I knew he had huge potential first time I stopped by genverters.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..iPhone Blogging – Writing is so last millennium (& the Last Week in Review) =-.
Dave,
Thanks for sharing this article from Marshall. I’ve only recently understood what meta-tags were for. In April I switched to self-hosting and am using Thesis theme but when I do Marshall’s look up test I see a lot of my posts don’t show anything in Google. I guess Thesis isn’t doing as much of the stuff “automatically” as I thought. Guess I’ll be spending some time updating those old posts.
Keep the great posts coming! I’ve signed up for your email newsletter. I get much less useful stuff on a more frequent basis so don’t worry about bugging me with it!