Meta descriptions

[Julian]

I've been through all the current pages the last couple of nights and added meta descriptions where they were missing (virtually every one!).

Just to check I've not messed up too much, would contributors mind having a look at the pages they created and let me know if any terms need adding, deleting or changing, or, better still, edit them whilst on the page.

[Tony]

Good work Julian, major effort!  Any objections if I tweek a few - just to trend away from the older style keyword tag lists towards general descriptions as such?

[Julian]

No, Go ahead.  It was my best effort, I didn't know that meta tags formats had moved on .. when did that happen?

[Tony]

I think the extension name is a little misleading - meta tags traditionally came in two flavours - Meta description "This is a page about collecting stamps" vs Meta keywords "stamps, collecting, stamp collecting, enthusiast".

The latter used to be used way back to help search engines figure out page content (but is now largely ignored) - the former though is still used for the text displayed underneath search page results links (otherwise the first few lines of text from the page) - which is what the extension gives us.

I can see where you were going and it is all relevent anyway- I'll dive in an have a tweek - you've put all the right info there  

[Julian]

Oh bugger, had a little Google and appreciate the difference now!  What I've put is really not suitable in the vast majority of pages.

I know that the "key word" side of things doesn't hold as much importance as it used to but I think it's still common practise to use them.

Having put in quite a lot of time doing it how about if I convert them to key words by using ...     
<meta name="keywords" content="XXXXXXXXXXX" />

Then adding the description in addition?

[Tony]

Can that be done?  Damn clever these extensions  Yes - it'd be a shame to lose your work and if this site is to be believed they are factored in to search results somehow:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-importance-of-keywords-meta-tag-in-seo/6014/

[Julian]

Bugger again! No, it doesn’t work!  Many other HTML tags do.

I’ve tried putting “making a banana venturi” in the key words of the venturi page and making them an editors comment.  My guess is that SEs will ignore the words, but let’s try giving it a week or so and seeing if a search on “making a banana venturi” returns anything, otherwise I’ll have to go through and change them again.

[Julian]

Well, nothing showing up in Google under “making a banana venturi”.  But neither does any of the text in the metadesc tags on other pages.  Google usually lists the first text of the page but not always, Chugs Turmeric page is shown with text from about half way down!

So all in all a complete failure!  I suggest we remove all the metadesc tags when re-categorising the pages and ensure that the first sentence of each page is highly pertinent to the content.

Shame, but if you don't try you never know.

[Tony]

I think they do work to some extent - do a google for "biopowered" - the text matches the metedesc - but perhaps it takes an age for google to spot the changes?

[Julian]

Hmm, see what you mean, but I did several searches in which they didn't show up.  Perhaps they are just now coming to the fore.  Maybe leave it a week or so more.