The Painful Lost Opportunity That Is So Easy To Fix
by Howard C. Gray
There once was a website about wodgets. Wonderfulworldofwodgets.com sold wodgets of all kinds. For Wodget’s web pages, they used the thing Webmasters call the Meta-description=content. This nifty section of every website's admin web pages helps search engines determine what your website and web pages are about. It's also a clever little way to make for a cool and enticing advertisement that's totally free and very effective (just don't use it for a dated sale as you never know which search engine will and when, crawl your site). They knew about this and filled all their wodget web pages with a great "snippet" in the meta-description=content about Wodgets and what their company did. One problem, all their meta-descriptions were exactly the same AND they did not have one at all for their home page.
Greedy retailers once discovered they could use the Meta-description=content to gain rankings and make big money. They stuffed the meta-description with lots and lots of keywords, an effect good marketers called "spamming." Or they wrote non-sense that had nothing to do with the site, just to get a ranking! Everybody had "naughty pictures of Britney Spears" perhaps the most popular Meta tag description in history!
Search engines retaliated and many stopped displaying the meta-description in the results pages, instead pulling content from the page or using the Dmoz Directory description, (a rather ungainly way to lose control of how you appear in the results). Dismayed, merchants resorted to other methods of spamming the engines and the myth of the death of the meta-description was born.
However, search engine’s webmaster guidelines continued to offer this feature. If the death was real, wouldn’t this be discontinued? As search engines became more sophisticated in weeding out naughty spam, they returned to displaying the meta-description again in the search results. But for many, it was only for the good boys and girls who played by the rules.
It has become clear is that using the meta-description is not only a way to tell the search engine what your page is about, but also as a way to create an opportunity to use it as “free advertising.”
When a searcher types in keywords, they look to the results to find what they want by reading the title and the subtitle or “snippet” under the title before they decide whether or not to click on the link.
If the snippet looks unusual or suspicious, no clicks there! If the snippet shows keyword stuffing or mumbo-jumbo non-sense, nope, not clicking that link, I might get a virus mucking about in my computer or be assaulted with a bunch of annoying pop-ups. To quote an experienced searcher, “Oh, I never click on those links. Those companies look like they might spam me when I visit their site.” – Paultoomey.com, (thanks Paul).
So here is your opportunity to offer the searcher a way to determine what makes your link different (and better) than other links they see. Just like Wodgets. Many wodget companies resort to overseas factories to manufacture their products. As a result, their quality is poor. You however, offer a Lifetime Warranty. You make your wodgets in the U.S.A. You’re proud of this. It’s your selling point. For many wodget owners, this is a call-to-action to buy your product. They don’t want their wodgets wearing out when they use them. So you create a meta-description that says this.
Your page title in under 65 characters (including spaces):
Super-duper Wodget Company - World's Best Made Wodgets
Your meta-description in under 155 characters:
Our quality durable wodgets have a Lifetime Warranty! Made in the USA. 5 Star reviews from satisfied customers. Write a review - win a wodget case!
What you’ve done is created an invitation to click on the link (read reviews, write a review, win a wodget case). You’ve created an opportunity to cleverly optimize the page without spamming. In this meta-description there are several possible keyword strings commonly used: “durable wodget,” “quality wodget,” “made in usa wodgets,” “wodget reviews,” “wodget case,” and so on. The combinations could be infinite.
Now you’ve tapped into a clever little word called relevancy. Because these keyword strings are connected to the word wodget, the meta-description becomes very powerful in not only optimizing the page, but also in increasing and converting traffic. Most importantly, after a searcher has landed on your page, they’ll see the snippet was telling the truth and now you have overcome perhaps the largest hurdle for Internet merchants: credibility.
So Wonderfulworldofwodgets.com went back to each and every Wodget page, writing a meta-description that was unique for each Wodget page and they included their "point of sale" (what makes their company better, different, unique - like "Lifetime warranty" or "fresh-hulled nuts" etc). They went to their home page and wrote about the family history of wodgets, where they are made and so on. They included their company mission statement. Now the Wonderfulworldofwodgets.com is the biggest and happiest wodget store on the Web. Not only do they have great rankings, but their conversions rates are slap happy!
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