#SEOpodcast 276 - Meta Description Tips

Welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of E-WebStyle. I am Charles Lewis, your internet marketing specialist. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. This is podcast number 276. As always, there is a tip from our previous podcast, and that tip says, your website should grow from just needing content to being the destination for great content. Exactly, and what that means is as your company grows, your site should grow, right? A lot of times people launch a brand new site or a redesign, and with content being so important these days, there's always this rush to just get content up, get content up, get content up. And I get that. We've been putting those situations at times, but the thing is, you should grow. You should move from just getting content up to actually writing your own content to putting out content that actually has value, that is relevant, that makes sense, that's factual, that's truth, that people can find. Link-bait. Exactly, that they will link to, that they will share, and more importantly, that you will become the export. You will become the source for that type of content. And when you do that, what happens? Well, your ranking goes up, your click-throughs go up, you get more leads, and you make more money. Money. Your content should grow with your company. Because nothing matters except... Yeah, ROI. Results. All right, remember, we are broadcasting live from Houston, Texas, and we are your friendly local neighborhood Top Position Snatchers, where our mantra is... Don't be a deuce. All right, so we got a really good article today, and that article talks about... Man, I want to give a punch in the face to Hen Lai. I think I'm pronouncing that right. Lai, L-A-I. Yep. Over at Search Engine Journal, he posted an article, 8 Tips to Writing Killer Meta Descriptions to Increase Your CTR. And so, you know, it's a great article because we understand that the Search Engine Result page is the first opportunity

to sell. Yep. Right, and so he got 8 tips on how to write some meta descriptions that encourage people to click so you can have more click-throughs. So we'll dive into that in a minute. In a minute. If you're in a position to, you have some sort of device, we would like you to tweet now, and what should... What's similar to this one here? What should they tweet? You should tweet if you're watching. What you see is behind us. Hashtag SEO Podcast. This is number 276. Be sure to tag us in it at BestSEOPodcast at E-WebStyle. That way we can follow you back and do all of our social networking stuff. Excellent. So we've got a contest, whatever thing going. If we get 10 or more likes, followers, or whatever, new ones on either Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, G Plus Local, or just G Plus, then we will skip this section. This section is the part that talks about getting reviews, and today we skipped the section. Yeah, it's gone. We got to... Thank y'all for following this. Yeah. I just followed all 19 of y'all back in the last 20 minutes, so appreciate you following us. So it is 19. We skipped last week, so you guys had two weeks. You didn't hit 20, but you had to hit 10 at least one of the weeks. Yeah, exactly. So that's what it was. Yeah, I doubt it was like nine and a half, and then eight. Yeah. All right. So what we will say is there are a bunch of ways you can stalk us, haunt us, follow us, and those are Facebook.com slash... E-WebStyle. Twitter.com slash... E-WebStyle. YouTube.com slash... E-WebStyle. Instagram.com slash... E-WebResults. Just testing. Oh, yeah. E-WebResults. It just really puts the emphasis on results. Yeah. Hey, by the way, we're talking about results a lot. Check out our Facebook page. We do have a link with new logos and a considering 90% name change. And do this. Do this for me. I'm going to just throw this off. Chris don't even know.

Everybody who's listening right now, or whenever you listen to it, get on Twitter, tweet us with either one, hashtag E-WebStyle or hashtag E-WebResults. That's kind of a vote. We kind of already made our decision anyway, but I'm curious to hear what you guys say. Thoughts. Yep. Exactly. What does the audience say? Hey, listen, if you're a WordPress guru or a PHP programmer extraordinaire, we might be looking for you. Yep. Give us a call. Submit an audio resume, 713-510-7846. If you want a free website analysis, all you need to do is go to our website, e-webstyle.com. Yep. And you will find a website analysis form. Fill that out. If you're in a hurry, we're still a little behind, please give us a call. And then now for the favorite segment of the podcast, the algorithm cataclysm. Cataclysm. It's amazing how it's a good transition. Yeah. It's like, oh, yeah. You switched up. That was funny. So dig this, right? There's nothing mobile related, and it's not even really an algorithm, released algorithm per se, but it is a change to the search results, which is why I'm bringing this to you today. So Google's added a place, add a link to where you can place food orders. Okay. So if you do a search for your favorite restaurant, and then if that local listing shows up, key be in a local listing shows up, then below the map, where they usually have site extensions, where a new extension will be there, and you can place an order. Wow. That's awesome. That's cool. Now dig this, though. Isn't that how you take something somebody else did and make it better? So Bing did the same thing, right? Bing did it, and then Google actually did it after that, but added more features. Right. So with Bing, you can only place orders. With Google, you can place orders. You can reserve tables. You can create appointments. You can do all kind of stuff from the search results page. That's just awesome. But I also think it's more of

the trend going towards mobile usage and not necessarily landing on a results page. Right. Because imagine now I don't have to click that follow through and get to my restaurant site. Right. I can actually place this order from here. Yep. Before I could call or get directions without having to go to the site. Yeah. Now I can place the... That was a step. That was another step, exactly. And so, and I'm okay with that. You know, as a marketing person, I look for that click because I want the traffic so I can check the analytics. But at the end of the day, if you're just going to place the order, and we talked about that earlier, it's all about results in the first place, then I'm okay with that. I'm really okay with that. So punch in the face to Google and making it easier. I can dig that. Making some good stuff. All right. So now we've got a little bit of news. Step one is, or news item one. Yeah, we've got a couple news items. And so this first one here is about Apple. Apple is in the market to create a competitor, to compete with Google, Yahoo, and Bing. And so all my Apple users out there, iPhone users, iPad users, Mac users, you're familiar with Spotlight Search, right? That's Apple's kind of desktop searching feature. Well, a lot of you guys remember, I guess probably in 2013, Apple purchased Topsy. Topsy is a social search company. They specialize in, you know, social search and rankings and things like that. Anyway, Apple bought them, and the intent has kind of been made clear now that they're in development of their own search engine. And so I think that's what's up. I think that Apple has a big enough following, a big enough user base, that if they make their search default on their devices, and it gives... And it's good enough. And it's good enough. That's the key. It has to be good enough. You cannot deliver suck results because it's

just going to be worse than... Bing. Yeah, exactly. And so I think it's a good deal. And, you know, I'm a Mac user, and so I'll definitely try it. Excellent. Next piece of news from Google's, this is actually pretty interesting. There are more searches happening on mobile devices, and this is recent. This is last month they published that. Within, for 10 different countries, including the United States and Japan. I don't know, that's an odd combination. Well, we knew that. We knew that mobile search would eventually... It was like 48, 49, 50, yeah, so... We knew that mobile search would eventually overtake desktop search. Yep. Hey, here's some bad news, or actually good news because you can now take care of it. Jetpack. So I'm talking about WordPress, right? Jetpack is a default install in a lot of versions. All WordPress versions, it comes installed. It's up to you if you activate it or not, but it's installed. And 2015 theme, so that's the theme, that's the default theme, they've identified a vulnerability. So that sucks, right? Because it's everywhere. It's a new theme. Ubiquitous. Apparently, the potential vulnerability is the example.html file. So just go delete that. Now, Security also put out a statement that said that that example.html file is usually... It's in other plugins as well. Right. Those are the just two most popular ones that they've seen it in. And so now they also listed a series of hosts. GoDaddy was included. I should have brought the list of hosts that already applied a patch. Right. Okay, and so if you weren't on that list, then you need to manually either remove that file or get your hosting to apply the patch. And I'll post that on Facebook after the podcast. Absolutely. And finally, in the news, Yelp is seeking a potential buyer. So I wonder if this has anything to do with that video that's coming out, right? So there you go. Right? Right? Well, and it's going to be wild because it just got crowdsourced, funded on Kickstarter, which I

helped with. So the company's market cap is $2.9 billion. They're saying they could get as much as $3.5 billion. I'm curious to see what's going to happen. So remember, Google tried to buy them before. Right. It was like $500 million or something, and they declined it. And so I figured Google would probably step back to the plate. You know, Yelp has a great relationship with Bing. Those results show there. So I'm pretty sure Microsoft was in the market to try and make a purchase. So it'll be whoever buys it. Does Google need them anymore because their G Plus Local has gotten so strong, right? G Plus, eh. But G Plus Local is so important and, you know. I mean, to buy them just to close it. Yeah. That's an expensive closer, by the way. To take it away from Bing. That'd be pretty smart. Exactly. For sure. I think we got a couple of tips, right? Yeah, I got a couple of tips. Man, this punch in the face goes, so I got one. Goes to Adriana. Probably a little bit of Adriana. Of course, yeah. Man, punch in the face to you, Adriana. I really appreciate you. She always put me up on something new or something like this deal she's trying. So, you know, Google has this tool on Drive where you can upload your slides, right? Okay. So if you're creating a slideshow presentation. Yeah, your slide deck. Exactly. The problem was, and then so people can find it and share it. Well, Adriana wanted to not only do that, but see how many people were looking at it and figure out a way to track it. And so she sent me her slides deck on, get this, how to add it to Google and make it so it can be tracking analytics. Oh, that's kind of cool. Pretty cool. I read through the whole thing the other night. It's very informative, lots of information. I have yet to try it, just didn't have the time, but I will. So appreciate you

sending that to me. Punch in the face to you, Adriana. Very cool. All right. So you'll notice there's no tattoo. I did notice that. Although we lost one Instagram follower. I don't even know how that happened. We got a minus one, so we got to figure out what to do when we lose a follower. We do have some good reviews. These are from G+. The first one is from Ben Reader, who I think initially probably submitted a review on iTunes or something because the name looks familiar. And it was, of course, Fastos. Love these guys. I've listened to their podcast since number 50 and have faithfully put up with the audio issues because of the great content. I've been in internet marketing specials for several years, and these guys keep bringing quality information each week, which is always relevant to our industry. Keep up the good work and know that you will always have me as a loyal listener. Ben Reader, punch in the face to Mr. Reader. See the face to you. See that? Yeah. Next, Gary Adams. Got a choppy. Yeah. This one was also Fastos. In fact, he started it off with Fastos! Exclamation mark. I love listening to the SEO podcast. They're informative, but always fun to listen to. Other SEO podcasts are just so boring. They put me to sleep. These guys keep it entertaining. Keep up the great work. Guys, punch in the face. Mr. Gary Adams. To you. Awesome. That's what's up. All right. I'm glad you guys feel the same way. We try to make it fun. We try to make it entertaining and provide something of value. And so we're going to continue that process. So that is the potatoes of the podcast. Time to get into the meat. So like I said earlier, man, punch in the face to Hen Lai. Hen Lai over at Search Engine Journal posted this article. Eight tips to writing kilometer descriptions to increase your CTR. And let me just stop here and say, but I was kind of backtrack

what I was saying earlier. Well, not backtrack, but add to what I was saying earlier. That Search Engine Results page is the first opportunity to sell, right? When people are searching for a product or service that you offer and that Search Engine Result page shows, and now they're looking at listings, right? You and your competitors. And they're reading that brief meta description, which we're going to talk about here, about you and your competitors. And so if you want them to click, then you have to speak to what's going to drive them. And hopefully these eight tips can get us there. And I think they can or I wouldn't be presenting it to you guys. So with that, matter of fact, Hen goes on to say that there are two ways to get more people to your website. The first is by improving your rank in the search engines. And the second one is by improving your click-through rate. And he's absolutely right. It don't matter what type of ranking you get. If your meta description sucks, which by the way, if it sucks, you probably won't get a good ranking. But if your meta description sucks, then they won't click. And you will have great ranking with no click-throughs, which sucks. It will not generate results. Yeah, no results. So dig this. Number one, he says, copy paid ads. He says, what most people don't realize is people who run paid ads are constantly testing. And once they're done testing, they test some more. So that means their ads are optimized. Great point. The fact that these paid, unfortunately not all of them. Yeah. I've came across some really, really. I would say most of them not, actually. I think most of them are set them and forget them. Yeah, exactly. And so, but I get the concept. I get the concept, because I use it all the time. I'm always in AdWords, running testing, doing ads, changing ad text, seeing what has the highest CTR. And yes, then taking that information and using it

in the meta descriptions. Ironically, it was for a different purpose. Right. Like, I was using it to optimize the landing pages so my landing pages would have a higher conversion rate and a higher quality score. And so the meta description on that landing page was similar to the ad text. Yeah. But, you know, same concept. So kudos for that. But I'll take it a step further and say, not only use AdWords just for the sake of ad text, but just in general, for keyword research, for ad text, and all of that. AdWords is a great place. It takes some budget, but it's better to spend that money and do the research rather than go in, I don't know, optimize your site for the wrong phrase or use some description that's not converting. And so you take advantage of AdWords. It really works. Number two, copy your organic competitors. Right. He goes on to say, find out what kind of buzzwords or phrases that they have that you can incorporate and what benefits or features that they're emphasizing. And look, at the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with competitive analysis. Competitive research. Competitive analysis. Yeah, I do it all the time. Content, ads, keywords, graphics, layout, structure. Like, look at your competitors. You should be very familiar with your competitors. You should know they're top sellers. You should know how they market so you can differentiate yourself, right, and also know what you're up against. Now, just keep in mind, everything they're doing may not be right. It may not be all good to use, but if they're there, they've done something right. And so try to figure out what that is. Number three, invoke curiosity. I like, that's just good in general. You should apply that daily. To all situations. Anytime you want to get a response from somebody, you want somebody to take action, invoke their curiosity. Yeah. It literally killed the cat for a reason, right? People act on curiosity. He goes on to say, a good example is the, you

will never guess what happens next line we always see on Facebook. Yeah, it's overused, but it's overused for a reason. It works. Yeah. And he's exactly right. Right? Anytime you can get somebody to think about the future, well, what would happen if I did this? Then you're likely to get that click. You know, I'm thinking about one of our clients. I was talking to a client today, man, punching the face to Noble Mortgage and Investments, and you know, they offer hard money loans, right? And so, what if in our description, you know, one of their key selling points is that you can get this max loan and get it approved and have cash in your hand within 10 days. What if that's in our meta description? Yeah. Right? What could you do with the cash in hand in 10 days? Yeah. I'd click it. Yeah. I'd click it. So, if you can, you figure out what your process is and how can you word it to invoke some curiosity and kind of- About the future. About the future. Yeah. And the future with your product or with your service, right? And see if that increases your click-through rate. Matter of fact, he gave a couple examples. Find out how, a good word you can use. Discover how, ever wondered. Yeah. Or what would you do if, right? These are good phrases you can use in your meta description. You take those phrases, add on your, you know, your description of your product and the keyword, and you're probably almost there. Number four. Four. Features tell, benefits sell. That's an old one. Features tell. Yeah, that's an old one. He goes on to say, benefits demonstrate what your customers can gain, like making more money or having sparkling white teeth, while features are attributes of your business, right? Like a free consult or a certified home inspector. I'll take it a step further. When I kind of, this brought me back to my sales training I had 10 years ago, and it wasn't a features tell,

benefits sell. It was fab. It was FAB. Right. Features, advantages, and benefits. So I think the key here is that unlike pay-per-click, where we're limited to, you know, 35 characters on the first line, 35 on the second line, 25 character titles, that 35, 70, 95 characters, in a meta description, it's more like Twitter. It's more like 140. Right. Before it gets truncated. And so take advantage of that extra space. Go over the feature, the advantage, and the benefit because you have all of those extra spaces. Take advantage of it. Excellent. Number five, use numbers. Numbers work. Made me click on this one. Yeah. Right? He says, using numbers in titles is a highly effective way to get clicks. This not only applies to meta descriptions, but it generates clicks, whether using AdWords, Facebook, or YouTube, you name it. And he's absolutely right. People, numbers read easier. Right. Numbers are easier to understand. People can identify with numbers. And so anytime you can use numbers, whether it's a percentage, a decimal, a dollar amount, a time, a date, a price, whatever it is, anytime you can use numbers, it draws more attention and people have a higher likelihood of clicking it. Matter of fact, good example. Would you click on lifetime guarantee or 100% satisfaction guaranteed? Yeah, 100%. Here one, for us. Yeah. So when we get to the last week in December, we'll be starting our end of the year podcast. Right? We do it every year. We've done it for the past three years where we cover all 52 weeks worth of podcast content. So what if we posted this as end of the year podcast summary or 52 marketing lessons we learned last year? Yeah. Something you're going to click on. Yeah. One with the number. And so numbers stand out. Numbers enforce people to click. So when possible, use numbers in your titles and definitely in your description. Number six. He says, mention your USP. Right? And so your USP is, he says, is what makes you different from your competitors. Yeah.

And entities, we preach... Unique selling proposition. Yeah. We preach USP all the time. It's an important component in all the designs we do because it's worth highlighting. Um, I think, you know, uh, an example would be maybe if you're in the legal field, you may want to put in your meta description, you know, board certified or, or matter of fact, we have an attorney who's a former judge, right? And so we include that. There's a USP. Exactly. So find, find your USP that, that makes you unique, right? It can't be like great customer service. Right? It's not unique at all. You should have great customer service, but find what makes you unique and highlight that in your meta description. Um, number seven. Seven. He says, use your keywords. Duh. You know, he says, another added benefit to using your keywords is that it gets highlighted, which is a good point here, in Google. This helps the searchers see, uh, what your page is relevant to what they're searching for. And it is. If you search for something, then in the results, anytime that keyword is used that you've searched, it'll be bolded and highlighted. So that makes sense. But at the end of the day, it's just proper SEO. So if you're targeting a certain phrase, then you need to add that phrase in your meta description, period. And the last one, number eight. Number eight. Um, he says, mix and match. And he says, the SEO isn't an ongoing process. No, SEO is an ongoing process that you will keep learning over time. So track your results, keep tweaking and keep moving. And when he says mix, mix and match, he's referring to, you know, the previous seven tips, mix and match those things. And, um, and I agree all of them won't be applicable to everyone, but two of them that I think probably will be applicable to everyone is the PPC testing and definitely the competitive analysis. You know, use pay-per-click budget to figure out if you're going after the right key

phrases and what description you should use based on your click throughs from a paid budget. And then analyze your competitors. What is their meta description? How is their company growing? What are they ranking for? Right. And then figure out what services that they offer that are similar to yours and how they worded it. What buzzwords did they use? And then, you know, rinse, repeat, remix and make it work for you. And there's nothing wrong with that. So, man, great article, dude. Punch in the face to you. Hen Lai, man. Um, eight tips to writing killer meta descriptions to increase your CTR. Great information. Quick through rate. All right. Uh, do we have any what? Um, no what news. I don't have any what. All right. Well, uh, so if you're interested in growing your business using the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet, the internet, call eWebStyle for increased revenue in your business. Our phone number is 713-592-6724. If you have a referral, somebody who needs SEO that you can't handle or aren't interested in handling, send them to us. They pay their bill. We pay you. That's pretty straightforward how that works. Um, remember, and in fact, the, the, you were talking at the beginning, you were talking about the tip. I kind of go over the tip on the blog, uh, creative biz ideas, blog, blog talk radio program. If you just Google creative biz ideas, you will find the blog talk radio show. Uh, I broadcast that as the co-host with Nolan Davis on Mondays. Point in the face to Nolan. Yeah. Point in the face to Nolan. Yeah. Point in the face to Nolan. At 730, uh, on Monday mornings. And that's 730 Central Standard Time. So check that out. And, uh, remember we were filmed live here at 5999 West 34th Street. Sweet 106. Houston, Texas. Houston, Texas, 77092. Uh, we are the most popular internet marketing podcast because of all of you all. Thank you so much for being great fans, great listeners, writing reviews, interacting with us.

Tweeting us, calling us, Facebooking us. Yeah. Like all of that. Sending me Google slides. Like, appreciate y'all. Absolutely. Thank you guys. And until the next podcast, my name's Chris Burrus. Charles Lewis. Bye-bye for now.