When Meta Matters - How I Wrecked My Search Listing
April 17th, 2008 by MarkLast night I’m cruising through Google, checking in on some of my rankings when I decide to see if one of my main keywords is holding steady where I want it - at the top. See, we recently hit number 2 in most data centers for ‘hitch covers’ and in a few places we actually show up on number 1. So we’re thinking we’re pretty hot stuff right?
Well, almost.
When I searched for ‘hitch covers’ there we were at number 2. But wait a minute. Something wasn’t right:
Hmm…oops. What’s wrong with that picture? For some reason, instead of pulling the meta description for the homepage and using that as the ’snippet’ with our search listing, Google was pulling the prices of some of our featured products. Doesn’t make for the catchiest sales copy does it? I headed to my analytics account to see what the damage might be. Sure enough, our traffic from that keyword tanked yesterday. It dropped by about 75%.
Suddenly I felt like I had lucked into a date to the senior prom with the prettiest girl in high school, only to find out afterward that my fly had been down the whole night. Not a pretty picture.
So where did I go wrong? Up until a week or so ago, our normal meta description was working just fine. In fact, it still is for other keywords, also on the first page:
The good news is this ugly snippet on my search listing wasn’t random. It was actually my fault, which means I can repair it. Here’s an excerpt from the Google webmaster blog that tells the story:
Why does Google care about meta descriptions?
We want snippets to accurately represent the web result. We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL’s content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics. Keep in mind that meta descriptions comprised of long strings of keywords don’t achieve this goal and are less likely to be displayed in place of a regular, non-meta description, snippet. And it’s worth noting that while accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won’t affect your ranking within search results. (italics added)
There was my sin. A couple of weeks ago we re-wrote the meta descriptions for the site to more accurately reflect our available products and the improved rankings we were getting. Apparently, when Google indexed the site, something about how we’d written the new meta didn’t sit well with the algorithm.
What’s the lesson? Although meta descriptions are meaningless to your search rankings, they make a big difference in your search traffic because they either attract or repel potential visitors. Our job in writing them is to make sure they appeal both to the human doing the searching and spider crawling the site. There’s nothing worse than doing all the work to get to the top of page 1, only to sabotage yourself with a meaningless description.
The solution for me? Write them again and remove what Google apparently considered keyword stuffing. Build a few links to get the site re-indexed as quickly as possible, and the problem should correct itself.
Just when you think you’re getting a few things figured out…
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April 17th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Court,
Perhaps the 4 links at the bottom of your site a hurting your rankings. I say that because besides providing alternate anchor text for google, you’re doing nothing valuable by linking to….yourself. And what good is anchor text….it’s great, only if it’s the first anchor text on that page for that page.
Read this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts
Also, are you drop shipping for most products or what are you doing?
April 17th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Actually Mystro, it’s my site. To your questions: First, while I definitely trust seomoz as a resource (hence the link to their site from the post). We actually did see a jump in our rankings when we added the footer links. Incidentally, I did it on Court’s advice because he said that by giving the homepage those links from every other page of the site we’d increase the site’s overall relevance for those keywords.
At one point we made some changes to the site design and left out the footer links. Our rankings fell. We put them back in, the rankings returned. I can’t claim I’ve done it hundreds of times, but in this case, it appears to have helped.
Secondly, yes, we dropship nearly all the products we sell on the site.
Thanks for your comment!
April 17th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Very interesting information there. Would you be able to share what you had in your meta description tag, before and after? It might give us a better idea of what Google likes to see, or not see.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Hey Wireless!
Sorry I don’t have the old meta descriptions. I can telly you they were very similar to the one you see in the second screenshot in the post, which is the one Google seems not to like.
I can’t say definitively, but my guess would be Goog didn’t like how we crammed all those products into the description, because it took on the appearance of keyword stuffing.
My advice (and my plan) would be to just write your meta description based on the value a visitor will get by clicking through to your site.
Hope that helps!
April 17th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Hi Courtney,
Great blog post. I have a question for you. So, do you actually sell these trailer hitches? or is it drop ship? If it’s drop ship how did you set that up?
Thanks!!
April 17th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
That’s right, Gerald, we dropship them through a supplier we found in a directory of dropshippers.
How we set it up would be a series of posts unto itself; what I can say is you want to make the investment into getting your hands on reputable dropship directories and then do your homework on the track record of customer service with each individual product supplier.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Excellent. Thanks for sharing Mark. I appreciate it.
Any chance you have some suggestions on the best way to obtain a reputable dropship directory?
Keep up the good work!
April 17th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Hey Gerad! Actually that site is Mark’s - but I can tell you that he drop ships most of the hitches.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Thanks for replying Court. I also appreciate you sharing.
Ohh, and I love the new design. It looks great. UBD does good work.
Take care!
April 17th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
The meta descriptions are the most important 155 characters (inc. spaces) you can write about your website.
When it becomes the snippet in Goog rankings, if it’s well written it can improve the ctr dramatically.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Well said, Bristol. This is a prime example of the price you pay when those 155 characters aren’t done properly.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
PS Don’t worry about putting keywords in the meta description - they don’t do anything for your rankings - concentrate on the motivation…
April 17th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Superb post Mark Thanks for providing this info. know i further understand the importance of meta description.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Thanks Daniel! Glad you learned something.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Is it true that the meta description plays no part in SEO? I would love to be able to use it for straight marketing, but I also thought it needed keywords.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
You’re right - as I mentioned in the post it plays no role at all in the search rankings, so when writing your meta descriptions you should focus only on attracting people to your site. That may mean using some of your keywords, but only because they accurately describe what a person will find when they land on your page.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
I always consider people first when I’m writing my meta descriptions. They really don’t help at all with your rankings, but they should have a nice grab to pull in the users. It’s rather like the lede in stories, news articles or news releases. You have to snag people’s attentions in short time that you have them.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Hey Courtney,
Nice blog, great info and I’ve looked at a lot of them in the last 6 months..lol
I’m down to about three or four now that I check in on and yours consistantly produces useful information.
This post here is handy because it reminded me that when I’m doing the meta keyword part of this next site to go easy on the keywords and long on the copywriting, the sugar.
Also I noticed that you have three entries on google for trailer hitch universe. Do the four links at the bottom of the page and how they inter link in the site play into that? Also is joeant.com your directory ?
You have also made me start thinking about setting up an ecomnerce store that takes payments on site and not clicking through to an affiliate. Whole different ballgame and I think a bit more google friendly.
Thats about it.
Later.
April 17th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Hey John,
No, joeant.com is an old directory we’ve submitted our site to in order to improve our link strength for the site.
And yes, like I mentioned in one of the comments above, we added the footer links at the bottom of the pages to give the homepage more relevance for those keywords. We did it based on Court’s good advice, and it seems to have helped.
Glad you’re finding the site useful. Let us know anything we can ever help you with.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Oh!!!! Why didn’t you write this post a few months ago? I was wondering what was going on.
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The Masked Millionaire
April 20th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Great post! Very informative!
I see so many ’seo help’ forums advising webmasters that meta’s are ‘dead’ and to not even bother with them! While the description tag won’t help your rankings, it certainly CAN help your click thru rate.
Thank you for sharing!
April 20th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I had no idea that descriptions make no difference to search engine results, but it always seemed to me that it’s better, in general, to write for people rather than attempt to second guess Google.
Experience with my sites seems to show that although initially I get a highish ranking with Yahoo, and a lesser one for my web site topics with Google, after a few months this changes and I rise in Google rankings, whilst Yahoo, and MSN stay the same.
I think the reason for this is that Google, I am told, have human reviewers who once they look at the web site give it a helping hand.
BRAY
April 28th, 2008 at 11:36 am
[…] When Meta Matters - How I Wrecked My Search Listing […]
July 13th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Hey Court or Mark,
This is probably a dumb question, but how do I go about changing the meta description? I have done a search on your site for Meta, and can´t find the answer, so any help would be great!