(Reading time: 6 – 9 minutes)
A while back I did a little (un)SEO coaching for a client, explaining the ins and outs of SEO metadata.
Let me tell you a little bit about this client. Soaks everything up like a sponge. And eyes like an eagle, she has. Doesn’t miss a thing. This woman is Vigilant! (The best kind of client there is)
Anyways, I’m hanging out doing some writing or whatnot (because that’s what I do), and I get this urgent email: Google has refused the deliver the correct part of her SEO metadata as the snippet returned from a Google Alert.
Disaster! Has befallen us!
But here’s the thing: Google promises to return what they think is the best snippet, not what you think is the best snippet.
So what’s this SEO stuff really all about, then?
How I answer this question for myself is what I call the “unSEO” approach.
The beginning of search
In the beginning, there were web pages. Then, there was Alta Vista. Then, everyone decided to make easier and describe what the web page was about.
Thus, HTML specifies an element called “meta.”
Then came Google, with the notion of examining links to pages, not just pages.
So that’s old news.
But if you do a Google search on “HTML meta,” you will find a lot of web pages with really good information. Here, check it and see: HTML meta.
However, despite the wealth of information displayed by Google, perhaps there’s room for a slightly different perspective on HTML meta, especially with respect to search engine affairs.
Here’s my take on it.
“meta”, by definition…
First, in this context, the word “meta” means “more comprehensive” or “more abstract.” For example, a summary or an abstract of a web page provides meta-information about the web page.
When you read about “SEO metadata,” the topic being discussed is how to express the meaning of an entire web page into a short description and a few words. This description and these words are added to a web page as <meta> elements within the <head> element.
Back in the day, Alta Vista, Excite, Yahoo, Inktomi and others used metadata for figuring out search results.
It’s not so simple now.
Trap for the unobservant
If you have paid close attention, you might have realized by now that what we typically refer to as “SEO metadata” consists of two (2) HTML meta elements and the (single) HTML title element.
That is, the SEO metadata is more than the <meta> elements.
Further confusing the matter is that <meta> elements are used for more than SEO. We don’t see this when we’re adding metadata to out blog posts.
Let’s fill out our SEO boxes and see what happens:
SEO Metadata: title and meta elements
Clearly, we have something like this:
<title>...</title>.<meta name="keywords" content="..." />.<meta name="description" content="..." />.
SEO metadata web page source
If this is clear as mud, it’s not your fault. The definitions are borked up. But don’t blame me, I’m just reporting on the way it is.
Trap for the uninformed
SEO Keywords. Every, single dadgum SEO plugin and theme have this field available, and just about every, single dadgum blogger says “Google doesn’t use it so don’t you use it either.”
They’re only partly right. Here’s what Google actually says:
They [meta keywords] simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.
The emphasis on “at present” is mine.
If you read the whole paragraph, you find that handling keywords is a feature of their enterprise search tool. I would put money that meta keyword handling is simply a configuration parameter. That is, I would put money on Google being able to “flip a switch” to re-enable it any time they wanted.
Trap for the unwary
“Everybody knows that” SEO description is returned by Google as part of a search result.
Yes and no.
Google chooses to display snippets from the search result according to it’s own notion of what matches the query best. Neither you nor I nor any SEO guru on the planet can tell you with 100% accuracy what, exactly, Google is going to display for a snippet. I doubt there’s more than a handful of engineers at Google who could tell you at any given time exactly what the algorithm is going to do. (The difference between “exactly” and “probably” could be significant.)
“Is all this SEO metadata crap really necessary?”
In a word, “no.”
It’s not necessary at all.
Any decent theme will extract the blog post or page title and use that for the <title>. Some SEO plugins will extract the first few lines to use for description metadata. And since Google doesn’t weight keywords in search results any more, why bother?
Because I’ve found that the bother provides me with the following benefits:
- If Google ever changes it’s algorithm to weight keywords, I’ll be there. Personally, I suspect Google does weight keywords, with the value of the weight currently 0. That’s how I would do it, just set the keyword weighting parameter to 0. Or some other relatively simple scheme allowing them to sell search engine services to enterprise without doing any work.
Think IBM and “capacity upgrade on demand” and you’re in the ball park. - There is evidence Bing and Yahoo continue to use keyword weighting. Yes, neither have Google’s market share… but each still serve millions (billions?) of search results every day. That’s a lot of traffic.
- SEO metadata is genuinely useful to me. So I continue to use it. It might be useful to you. I’ve explained how in Blog Post Engineering.
As mentioned above, there are hundreds of good articles on HTML meta elements and SEO metadata returned by Google. Spend an afternoon thoughtfully reading through a few of these articles and draw your own conclusions. You can start with the articles I’ve conveniently listed for you below.
Related reading
Try these first:
I can hear you out there asking, “So what do I do? Use SEO metadata or not?”
Well, you have all the facts, you make can make up your own mind.
What do you think?
What do I think? I think if it’s good enough for you Dr WordPress, it’s good enough for me ;) I also know that to spend hours going back to add this information at a later stage if Google changes the rules is something I won’t do. Easier to take a few moments to do it as I go along.
Eleanor Edwards´s last post ..Held hostage by the muse
Thanks, Eleanor.
Adding it as I go is my thinking as well.
That was part of the reason I used to those Week in Review posts every Friday: make sure all my SEO stuff was caught up.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..WordPress Case Study- Gran Canaria Travel Guide
Dave, I use the Thesis theme, which has fields similar to All-In-One SEO, and I always enter the meta data and come up with a good custom link that includes keywords.
Does it help? I don’t know. I do get a lot of search traffic to my blogs, especially my hiking blog.
John Soares´s last post ..Blog World Expo in Las Vegas- My Unanswered Questions
John, here’s the thing: I believe it does help, but I can’t prove.
Very few people can prove it.
Thesis is pretty good. I use AIO SEO instead of Thesis because I do not know what happens to my Thesis SEO if I switch away from Thesis to another theme. It’s something worth testing, if I had the time.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..Want to Write Better Here’s how…
Dave,
As someone trying to learn about SEO as much as possible, this was a delightful read. Seo metadata == confusing but I’ll give this another read in a bit. Thanks!
Moon Hussain´s last post ..Importance of Following Through With Your Goals
Moon, SEO is a funny beast to be sure. If I were to give real advice on SEO, it might be something like this: limit your reading to the official websites for Google, Yahoo and Bing, and dedicated SEO sites where the authors post actual numerical traffic results. The real information is there, most people just repeat what they read somewhere else.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..I want to be an Olympic blogger Part I
Even though it is the lab rat’s day off, I couldn’t resist reading. I do use AIO SEO on both my blogs, even the Thesis but it is not because I know what I am doing or anything. I just follow directions and sometime I pick the right ones This was enough information so that I am less likely to go off at the next mention of meta data. So that explains my meta data but how do I know what your meta data are (if I am trying to link usefully)?
Ralph´s last post ..My Path Continues – A New Job
Maybe I’m being too simple but I would always go for a right click on the page and ‘view page info’ which then has it all set out neatly for me.
However, I’m not sure if that’s a mac thing or a firefox thing so failing that, ‘view page source’ also has the information. It’s just a little less pretty. :)
Eleanor Edwards´s last post ..Wanted- Experts Could you write a monthly column for Give A Brick
What I get doing that isn’t helpful. I can see the whole code for the page but that is TMI.
Ralph, the second screenshot of of this actual page. I took the screenshot after I entered the information. Compare this: http://website-in-a-weekend.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/seo-metadata-page-source.png
with the page source, CTRL-U is often how you can see that, or use a “View Source” menu item.
Dave Doolin´s last post ..I want to be an Olympic blogger Part I
It only takes a minute or two to do the SEO stuff and as an amateur when it comes to this I find it easier to just do the extra and hopr for the best.
Nicola@SimpleDivorce´s last post ..What is a Divorce Coaching Program
It really isn’t that hard.
Getting people to use a anchor for linking back is a lot harder!
Dave Doolin´s last post ..Is Social Media Good for Small Business
My approach to SEO is simple. I find things that I am interested in reading and researching for example this article. I try to take something positive away form the info and then do my SEO along the way. It is a long road but it will come together eventually
Joe´s last post ..Youtube to Mp3