Mar
3rd
Meta Descriptions Affect Google Rankings Again
It’s been a few months since I last posted on my blog. That period was a bit hectic for me; I established my own company Stradiji. Basically we provide SEO, Social Media, and Business Blogging services. I will later address it in a seperate issue. I would like to talk about meta descriptions and their increasing importance in 2010.
What Is a Meta Description?
It is the text snippets of the webpage you see in search results. They used to be an important ranking factor until 2009. In 2009 both Google and Yahoo! officially announced they no longer used Meta-descriptions in their search algorithms. However, recent developments in Google’s search algorithm bring Meta description back to life as an important ranking factor.
Google did not make an announcement about the Meta descriptions. However your site’s meta description can now significantly affect your rankings. I will explain how it happens.
How Can Meta Descriptions Affect Your Rankings Again?
In Jan 2010 Google announced that they would be tailoring everyone’s search results based on their search history whether users are signed into Google or not. Actually Google has been customizing peoples SERPs (search engine results pages) for quite a while already, but until this year it only happened when you searched while signed into your Google account. This year, signed in or not everybody gets personal results.
Whether you’re signed in or not into Google account, all the searches you run on Google are stored in your browser cookies. This data is called ‘Web History’ and Google uses it to customize your search results. If you’re not signed in, your Web History is stored for 180 days, then old data is deleted and replaced with new searches. If you’re signed in, there’s no time limit and you can easily manage your Web History. The thing is either way the searches you run and sites you visit will affect your future search experience.
The sites you visit more often will be ranked higher in the search results on related queries. For example if you search for ‘problogger’ and visit www.searchforblogging.com. Next time when you search for ‘problogger’ you may see www.searchforblogging.com in top 10 results even if it doesn’t rank there in the general impersonalized search.
Although Meta descriptions are no longer part of the ranking algorithm they can significantly affect your site’s positions in the personalized search results. Your Meta description is a crucial factor that determines the CTR (click-through-rate) of your site in search results. The more compelling your description is, the more searchers will click it. When they click through to your site from search results this is recorded in their Web History. Next time they search for a product or service related to your site, it may appear high up in their personalized search results. Got it?
What Should You Do?
You should keep in mind that Google does not always show the Meta description you provide. Sometimes it just brings a random text snippet from your page that contains the keywords used in the query. But you can easily locate the keywords where your Meta description shows up by searching for them on Google.
All you need is to take a look at your Meta descriptions. Check and see how your website appears in the search results and find ways to improve it. Having a compelling text in your search results snippet will get you more clicks, more visitors and eventually more customers.