Why Meta Descriptions are still important

How Meta Descriptions are used on Search Engines and Social Media Websites

1. While not a ranking factor, the meta description is still important in organic searches as the search engines use this in the ‘snippet’ that appears below the title in search results.  The more relevant and enticing this snippet is, the more likely you are to get users to click on the listing.

Google Search Results showing Meta Description used as snippet for HighRankings.com

Charlie Sheen #winning at Twitter

With all the Charlie Sheen gossip flying around, what people might not be addressing is apparently he’s a social media guru. Not only did Sheen break one of Twitter’s follower records by gaining a million followers in one 24-hour period (plus one hour, making it 25 and change), he’s also going make stacks of cash from his 140-word gems of wisdom. As indicated, Charlie Sheen is indeed winning and it looks like joining Twitter, allowing the sycophantic crowd to gather around him, might be his best move yet — “F-18, bro” rants aside.

According to an AdRants post, Sheen has signed a sponsored tweets deal with Ad.ly, a company that specializes in garnering celebrity endorsements in social media. The going rate for Sheen Twitter madness? 1 million dollars a year.

Article from here

 

Non-crazy people news after the jump:

Follow up on Google’s algorithm change

SEO Book has a pretty good article summing up the SEO perspective on the Google algorithm change: ”

Google makes a big algorithm change, and all hell breaks loose. Well, some hell, and some jumping for joy, depending on which direction a webmasters rankings went.

As I wrote in Content Farms Vs… at the beginning of last month:

Put it this way. Any algorithm that takes out Demand Media content is going to take out a lot of SEO content, too. SEO copy-writing? What is that? That’s what Demand Media do. As I outlined in the first paragraph, a lot of SEO content in not that different, and any algorithm that targets Demand Media’s content isn’t going to see any difference. Keyword traffic stream identical to title tag? Yep. A couple of hundred words? Yep. SEO format? Yep. Repeats keywords and keyword phrases a few times? Yep. Contributes to the betterment of mankind? Nope. SEO’s need to be careful what they wish for….

There were a lot sites following the SEO model of “writing for the keyword term” taken out, not just sites pejoratively labelled as “Content Farms”. Ironicly, the pinup example I used, Demand Media, got off lightly.

If you want more detail about what happened, and why, check out Aaron’s post Google Kills eHow Competitors, eHow Rankings Up, and, if you’re a forum member, this very detailed and insightful thread.”

Other news after the jump

Google Algorithm Change: The winners and losers

Not much going on today so I’m just going to repost this article from Search Engine Journal and leave it at that:

The air is heavy with hatred of spam as analysts rail against current search indexing tactics, a spam clock having been launched to decry the heavy amount of trash being generated, and some people even burning thingsto show their rage. While Google hasn’t necessarily joined this bandwagon, they have acknowledged the problems and have started implementing solutions. The two major elements introduced thus far have been a Chrome extension that will get user feedback on which sites are spam, and an update to the search algorithm designed to demote low-quality content.

There’s little doubt that Google’s change has altered the construction of the search engine pages, but figures vary somewhat on who actually winds up missing out and who gets closer to that coveted number one position. One of the more comprehensive evaluations of loss happens at Sistrix, where an advanced “visibility index” calculates the value of search terms based on their traffic, the click through rate on specific positions on the SERP, and more. According to that index, our top losers include eZine Articles, Suite101, Associated Content, Free Downloads Center, Essortment, American Towns, Article Base, Find Articles, Business.com, and FAQs.org. All of those sites received more than a 90% visibility loss, according to the Sistrix index. Other analysts agree with at least several of these top items, but add Buzzle.com, BizRate, Shopping.com, Squidoo, and Hub Pages to the list.

More after the jump

Facebook still wants to give out your info

Remember last month, when Facebook announced it was granting access to users’ mobile phone numbers and home addresses to third-party developers (upon users granting permission)? Soon after, the companysuspended the feature as privacy concerns quickly escalated.  Well they haven’t given up, more info after the jump.

Most popular retailers on Facebook

Not familiar with those names?  Jack Wills, Republic, Topman, Topshop, River Island, Asos, Miss Selfridge, and New Look all make or sell clothing.  (Play.com deals in CDs, DVDs, books, and the like.)

Google’s three laws of display advertising physics

As presented on the Official Google Blog.

Law number one (nicknamed “The Theory of Relativity”): “The distinction between different advertising technologies (like ad networks and demand side platforms) is blurring.  Each of these technologies provides similar ways to achieve your marketing goals, depending on how you want to manage your campaign.”

Law number two (AKA “Fusion Theory”): “There’s a few different ways to deliver ads to people.  Each on their own is powerful, but combining these different ways unlocks the best results.”

Law number three (or “The Law of Perpetual Motion”): “New technology is driving rapid change in display advertising – which is constantly improving marketers’ creative palettes and the way that ads are bought and sold.  Embracing new media and technology provides a key way for marketers to differentiate and grow their businesses in a new universe.”

 

 

Foursquare grows by 3,400% in a year

Last month, the Foursquare put out an interesting infographic about its growth. Last year, Foursquare grew by  3,400% with total check-ins reaching 381,576,305. It has 6 million users.

Five free tools for competitor keyword research

• Search Engine Journal has a good article for us cheapo marketers; Five free tools for competitor keyword research to sum up they are SEOmoz Term extractor, Open Site Explorer, Google Adwords Keyword tool,SEMrush, Alexa.
• Google, for years, have been selecting dynamic titlesfor the search results when they deem that other titles are more appropriate. In fact, Google told us when they pick alternative titles, which includes (1) titles are particularly short, (2) titles are shared across large parts of your site and/or (3) titles appear to be mostly a collection of keywords. A thread at WebmasterWorld has a small uprising with webmasters who are upset that their title tags aren’t showing in Google’s search results. They don’t match the title tag from their page source code and are thus very upset.

That’s about it for today, pretty slow news day.

Twitter follows are worth $2 and Facebook likes are worth $8

ChompOn has released some interesting findings (pdf) related to social media sharing and its value to e-commerce. Specifically, the firm sought out to answer the question: “What is the value of a social action in online commerce?”

What they came up with is that a Facebook Share was worth $14, a Facebook “like” was worth $8, a tweet was worth $5, and a Twitter follow was worth $2.

“Admittedly, we believe the true value for likes and follows to be much higher due to creation of long-term loyalty,” says ChompOn. “Additionally, it is not possible to directly attribute traffic from these actions so it was necessary to estimate.

I guess these figures have to be an average, the context can change so massively from one company to the next I can’t imagine that you could accurately assign these figures to an individual company.