A meta description for a web page is the information that appears about that particular page in search results. Looking at the pic above, the text you can see that describes what the page is about is the meta description.
In this case, Yoast describes what a meta description is, where it shows and moves on from there. Meta Descriptions are a contributing factor in your website's SEO. Google uses the information provided in the Meta Description to establish that page's relevance to the search term used by their clients. However, its not just the SEO factor that is important, the meta description is where you get a chance to convince potential clients that YOU are the best option for whatever it is they are looking for. Some Q & A's About Meta Descriptions
How Do I Access My Meta Descriptions?
Usually your website developer will either ask for the text you wish to use for each page of your website, or they may develop that meta description as part of their service. I tend to write meta descriptions as a free service to my clients to start and then once their website is up and running, they can send me the text they would like if they want to change it. Meta Descriptions appear in the <head> tag of your website page and unless your website is completely coded from scratch, there is usually an area in the page settings for your meta description. How should I word my Meta Description? I always suggest to clients that this is their one chance to convince possible clients to click through to their website. That's not entirely true, it's not your only chance, but that usually stresses how important meta descriptions can be. People are very busy in today's world and most tend to just scan through for something that peaks their interest so using relevant keywords is vital. What is also vital however is that it reads well (as a sentence not just a list of words) and accurately explains what is on that web page. Google will pitch a fit if you try to direct traffic to your website that has no relevance to your content, and trust me you never want Google deciding you aren't doing the right thing. So well formatted sentence using keywords relevant to that page (not generic words for your website) directed toward what you consider to be your perfect client. Can I just repeat the first paragraph of my page? In a word - NO! Consider this, your meta description is not only a paragraph that could drive traffic to your website, its also one part of your SEO for that page. So if you repeat your first paragraph that is diluting your SEO actions because you are using the same keywords, the same phrases and the same content so instead of getting two bites at the apple, you are only getting one. A meta description while used for your clients, is another chance to reinforce to Google that your content is extremely relevant to this search term. If both your first paragraph and your meta description use similar phrases and repeat some (not all) keywords, Google considers that a double whammy and slides you up the list. What if I don't add a Meta Description? Google will grab the first paragraph from your page and use that as the meta description. See - it's important you do your meta descriptions. How long should it be? Google upgraded the length of meta descriptions from 170 characters to 320 in around November 2017. However, just to ensure we don't get too comfortable they recently went back to the 155-170 character range. There is no technical length, however keeping to around 170 characters will ensure your meta description isn't cut off. What should I prioritize?
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Old school content writing
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Anyone who has spent any time working on improving their website ranking will know the phrase "Content is King". That is true - Google does have it perched firmly on the throne right next to "Solid SEO" on the left and "Link Master" on the right, however bad content won't necessarily help your SEO.
Google is smart. They've been doing this a long time and have had exposure to every trick in the book that has been used for the sole purpose of increasing your websites exposure. They are so smart in fact that they often know what your visitors are looking for even before you do. That seems somewhat scary at first, however when you really think about it, embracing this concept and putting yourself in the shoes of your visitor will enable you to create content that keeps Google blissfully happy. They are not the big bad SEO monster - they are in business just like you. Their business is showing their clients the best possible results for their searches. That means that they will never put one of your posts at the top of that search, UNLESS - it, along with the rest of your website meets the clients expectations. Content must do these 4 things:
Content that is blatently self serving won't help you acheive that. Content that is stuffed with what you consider to be keywords - again, won't help you acheive that Content that is posted at an over zealous rate won't help you do that - UNLESS its crisp, quality content. A huge quantity of content, if its hastily written and has no value won't do you any good, so its entirely possible that you've spent your weekends writing, writing, writing for no benefit. 
Writing regular content is important
Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash
The Key (ignoring the pun) Is Consistency
Take the following steps into account when you are assembling your content.
Today's browsing world can be very "big brother". I constantly feel like I"m being tracked and marketed to and while I undertand that is the world I live and work in, sometimes I really need to just search for flights without being shown hot to get from the Gold Coast to Turkey on every single page I visit for the next few weeks.
Enter: Private Browser Windows!
You all know I use Google Chrome for 80% of my work day. While I do use other browsers every day its Chrome that is my default browser so while other browsers do of course have this facility, its Chrome I'm talking about today.
What is Incognito? Incognito mode will erase your browsing and search history from any websites you visit during the session as well as deleting any cookies your browser picked up along the way. Cookies are the little tracking slivers of info that websites store on your browser to give them information about your visit, your location and also for the purpose of advertising relevant content to you at a later date. By not storing these you won't expose yourself to what can be a very annoying few weeks of remarketing based around your website visits. My primary reason for using incognito windows is mostly personal I will admit. If I'm searching for flights or accommodation for our next trip I flat out don't want to be distracted by adds for this for the next few weeks, so I use incognito. Once I'm done I know that I'm not going to get adds everywhere for the next few weeks which will drive me crazy! A primary benefit to me is that by not having a record of my searches, prices aren't going to go up when I go back to those travel websites. They don't know I was already looking so don't show me inflated prices based around the fact that they know where and when I want to fly. On the down side of this, I also don't get any "Prices have dropped" emails from Booking.com which if I'm honest, has saved me a bundle in the past. Another benefit of using an incognito window could be to avoid your "free" limit on pay per use websites such as newspapers for example. Some news websites will give you access to full articles up to a limited number and then their pay per view kicks in. IE you may be allowed to read 7 articles before they max you limit and ask you to start paying. That's fair enough to me but using an incognito browser, you aren't storing any cookies and you can confuse their system into thinking you are a new visitor every time. Less than ethical in my book, however it's not illegal and there is no way these large companies don't know you can easily do this. Its just too expensive for them to keep you out altogether so for now, this work around is completely overlooked by most business operating on the pay to play model after so many free visits. How Do I Open An Incognito Window?
How To Find Incognito In Chrome
In Chrome its really easy. You see the three little dots at the far right hand side of your browser window?
Click on those Click "New incognito window" and Voila! Done. It's that simple. Browse away. What Won't An Incognito Window Do?
Most browsers have an incognito function, some call it different things, but for most of them, clicking the menu on the right hand side should put you in the right place to find the private browsing window.
How many times have you gone to a website, only to leave inside 4 seconds when it isn't fully loaded.
Guilty!! Slow loading websites are 99% of the time caused by too large image files. Images that aren't just large in physical dimensions but also in kb size are DEATH TO YOUR WEBSITE! I know your skill set probably isn't resizing images but there is a free and easy way to do it. Hello Image Optimizer
There are more than a few image resizing tools out there, however I've found this to be very easy and wonderfully add free!
http://www.imageoptimizer.net To use it is very simple. You can just upload your images online or download their image resizer to your PC. I've only ever used the online version primarily as I'm horribly suspicious of anything I have to download. You can make your own decision. 
" The steps are very easy, simply choose your file, set what options you want and the maximum sizes, and click Optimize Now.
Tips:
Click the Optimize Now button and wait. Remember that it has to upload your large image so it's not instantaneous. Spend that time thinking about how frustrating this would be for a visitor to your website if they were trying to load your page with three 4mb images! Makes sense now doesn't it. Once you are done, you will see a resulting output as below. Simply download the file to your computer. Make sure to save it in your "Optimized Images" folder - you don't want to confuse the files. Also remember to rename it to a meaningful file name before you upload it. 
Visiting Chimanimani in Zimbabwe in 2017, I met our amazing hiking guide Colin. If you've ever been to Zimbabwe you know they are struggling terribly and I decided that if I could help out Colin I would.
So once I got back to Australia I started gathering everything I could to build his new website. You will notice that the website is reasonably pared down and has no large images or video. This is primarily as its really hard to get reliable internet in Zimbabwe and most users will be using their phone. Even travellers will probably not start looking for hiking or bird watching in Chimanimani until they are in the continent so it was very important that the website rendered well on mobile devices. The colours are based around Colins Rasta personality and of course the green ties in well with Africa. If you are ever going to Zimbabwe, consider Chimanimani and hike up the second highest mountain in Zimbabwe, which actually straddles the border of Mozambique so unwittingly, you visit Mozambique during your climb. Chimanimani Tour Guide Website 
I have a very bad thing to admit! Very bad from a website developers perspective!
When I went away, I really dumbed down my website so that I wasn't fielding requests while I was travelling. I KNOW! It was horrific, however I just could never be sure of where and when I would have internet and I made the decision that not getting inquiries was probably better than not answering them. I know in the overall scheme of things I will be paying for that now, however the upside was that when I came back from travelling I got to build a whole new website and design it around who I am now, not who I was before I left. My new logo embraces my love of the sparkle. My husband started calling me The Geek Queen years ago so I've always had the crown as part of my logo, however I really decided to fully embrace it just recently. Everything around at the moment has sparkle so I decided that Gold Geek Queen was me! The other colours are directed at my primarily female client base. I do have a few male clients and I do not discriminate however its women that I work for primarily so that's who I've aimed my website at. Let me know what you think. I'd love to know. 
I'm sure this seems like a strange title for a blog post, however the keystroke for these fractions has been one of the best things I've ever learnt.
I must have learnt this trick maybe 20 years ago now (it might have been the old Word Perfect actually) and I find I use them most days. If not daily at least weekly so I figured I would share the knowledge with you. Behold: ALT + number keys
So if you don't already know, you can create these fractions by holding down the ALT key and pressing a combination of numbers on your keypad.
Its very simple, you hold down the ALT key and while you are holding that down type in the 4 numbers that follow for each particular fraction.
As per usual, you can thank me later!
Have you ever been scrolling through the 127 tabs you have open in Chrome, closing all the ones you don't need and then, BOOM! You closed one you were using and haven't bookmarked?
Yes - we all have. There are ways to find out what you had displayed on that page of course, however they can be long winded and frustrating. You never know just how much crap you look at until you open your browser history. So.... did you know there is a way to instantly open that tab back to exactly where it was?? Behold: CTRL+Shift+T
Yup, its that simple. Hold down the CTRL and Shift buttons and while you are holding them down hit the letter "T" and voila. You closed tab will open right before your eyes. How cool is that.
There is an extra bonus to this keystroke as well. If you keep doing it, it will reopen tabs in the reverse order that you closed them. IE: It will open the last one you closed, and then the second last one, and then the third last one etc etc... My new favourite thing. You can thank me later!
My husband isn't really that tech savvy. Actually in the spirit of full disclosure he's borderline hopeless.
I'm not casting aspersions on his intelligence, his learning skills or abilities as he achieves some amazing things, however he just doesn't have the need to keep up with those little techy things. It got me thinking though - I wondered how many of you also don't have time to learn or remember practices that can really help you out of a jam so I thought, why not add a new blog category - Keystrokes and Tech Tips. So.... being the first blog post of this category I thought I would start with the most common thing I get asked. What is the difference between F5 and CTRL F5
Using any web based service will eventually result in a bit of a clog between the website server and your browser. It's not rare, its doesn't mean anything is wrong, it just means that things might have changed since you loaded that page into your browser.
When you load a webpage if its the first time you've visitied it, the browser asks the server for the content and the server returns it for your viewing. To save both resources and time, your browser stores this info in something called a cache. This enables you to navigate the website quickly as the pages are stored in the cache locally. If during the time you are checking out this website something changes you won't necessarily see it as you are viewing the cached version. Different browsers refresh the cache at different times and you can also override this is most browser settings, however we aren't going to go into that here. 
Website information comes from the server to your browser where it is stored in a cache.
F5
If you are working away and your page seems to stop, your first option would be the F5 button.
F5 and the refresh button will go to your browser's cache and redisplay the page based on what is stored in the cache. So if you just want to reactivate your browser F5 will most likely do that. CTRL F5
If you use Ctrl + F5 that forces the browser to go back to the server and ask for a brand new instance of the website. Effectively it forces the browser to clear the cache, get the newest verions and refill the cache with that info, and of course that is now what you see.
I have the nasty habbit of using CTRL + F5 constantly as I'm often refreshing to see code changes so I need the server to show me the latest version. One isn't worse than the other, the only difference is that if you use CTRL + F5 you will reload the page from the server which will be slightly slower and of course use your bandwidth.
You will be aware I've started a new blog category that evolves around Awesome Chrome Browser Extensions. This second one in the list might not be super useful for many of you but I am completely hooked. It makes life so much easier for me and I'm sure once you know what it is you will have some use for it also.
What Are Google Chrome Extensions?
Chrome Extensions are little tools that you add to your browser that enable you to take actions on or within the browser environment.
You add them simply and start using them straight away. They are like Apps for Chrome I guess. What is Full Page Screen Capture?
Full Page Screen Capture is an amazing extension that enables you to capture a screen shot of your entire screen. It doesn't just capture what you can see on your screen, it captures the entire page, even what you can't currently see.
For me, it's ideal. I can do previews for clients and then capture the entire screen shot and send them the image, or upload it to imgr and send them the link. I LOVE this extension and its so simple to use. 
Once you've installed it, simply click the little Camera icon and it will capture the entire screen from the page you are on and open it in a new tab as an image. Once the Capture tab has opened click the very obvious download button to save the image.
How Do I Get It?
Visit the Chrome Extensions page, search for "Full Page Screen Capture" and click the Add To Chrome button.
Voila!
Chrome is my browser of choice. Primarily I must admit its because Google drives so much of my daily work, however I like it better than Edge, and about the same as Firefox. So Chrome it is.
One of the best things about Chrome is the extensions you can add. Over the next few weeks I'm going to share my favourite extensions and why they are my faves. Some may be suitable for you, some may not, however I'm sure you will find at least a few great ones in the mix. What Are Google Chrome Extensions?
Chrome Extensions are little tools that you add to your browser that enable you to take actions on or within the browser environment.
You add them simply and start using them straight away. They are like Apps for Chrome I guess. What Is Keywords Everywhere?
Keywords everywhere is a great little tool that enables you to see the Cost Per Click (or CPC) for every search term you enter into google. Cool huh?
Not only can you see the current CPC, however you can see the search volume for the term and also the competition rate. I realise that sounds confusing however let me explain: Search Volume: this is the average number of searches for this term per month (usually averaged over the last 12 months). So if this says 40/mth that means that on average this exact search term is searched for 40 times per month. CPC: this is the current cost per click that advertisers are paying for one click on this keyword in Google Adwords. Competition: this is a number between 0-1 that tells you the number of advertisers that have ads with Google Adwords for this specific search term. 0 signifies a low number of advertisers and 1 signifies a lot of advertisers.
Check out the image below. I've used a search term that applies to my husbands business, mostly because he works in a very niche market so the volume and advertisers will be low.
You can see that the volume is 40/mo - which means that on average only 40 people globally search for this term every month. The CPC is $1.53 and the competition is 0.94 So a decent score which would indicate that there are more than a few advertisers using this term in Google Adwords. 
Now compare this search term.
You can see that over ninety thousand people searched for womens shoes on average a month. OK so I'm probably 1000 of those, but even so you can see its a very popular search term. You can see that the cost per click is only 97c but the competition is 1 - which means that a lot of people are using this term in Google Adwords. 
How Do I Get It?
Visit Keywords Everywhere and then click the "Install For Chrome" button and follow the prompts.
Once it is installed you can save your search terms as favourites and then monitor them by clicking on the icon. To save just click on the tiny star after the competition number. Easy peasy.... 
If you know me you know that I come from a programming background. My skillset was very much started on the backbone of logical programming. Design, while I love it, is not my strongest skill so when I discover a great tip or trick I always share.
Here is todays CSS tip: Using padding on a menu for mobile devices
If you know me you know that I come from a programming background. My skillset was very much started on the backbone of logical programming. Design, while I love it, is not my strongest skill so when I discover a great tip or trick I always share.
Here is todays CSS tip: Using the "box-sizing: border-box" item
SEO can seem ridiculously confusing, make you beleive you have no real concept of ROI and worst of all, make it very hard to see value for money.
Fortunately, there are HEAPS of free SEO resources out there and lots you can do yourself, for free that will enhance your websites search engine optimisation. Below I've listed some easy to do, no cost actions you can address on your website to help you improve your SEO visibility via your images. Every time you add an image to ANY page of your website you should consider how it can help you. Sure, if it's a product image, it has to be a consistent theme to the rest of your website, clear, concise and be a correct representation of that product. What is can also be is a great tool to attract your ideal target market to your website. CHALLENGE: Google can't read images. Sure you can find other instances of an image on the web via Google, but an image by default has no text. Because of this, its VERY important how you treat any and all images on your website. Search engines get the info from your images by reading:
For example: I'm looking for a 'boho crochet top' for a Christmas party (remembering Christmas is very hot here in Australia). For Google to show me an image related to my search it has to somehow know that image on your website is of a crochet boho top right? So its up to you to give Google this info and the easiest way to do this is these three easy steps below. 1: Name Your ImagesSo you may have three different tops that match that description on your website but they don't show up in any search - because - they don't have any text related to that image identifying them with that search. RESOLUTION: Name your images carefully keeping in mind, what clients may search for and how specific you want to get with your descriptions. ACTIONS: Before you even attempt to upload any image to your website, make sure it has the best possible image name. 2: Give Your Images Captions
Captions are another way to enforce what your image is about and how that is relevant to your clients Google Search.
RESOLUTION: Give your images a meaningful caption that is short and to the point. Think about how your client may possibly find you and use those search terms (in a logical way) in your image caption. ACTIONS: ASAP on upload, edit your image and add the caption you have decided on. Its very simple and easy to do it now but its mind numbingly boring to go through your entire website at a later date to do hundreds of images. Make this part of your image upload habits. EXCEPTIONS: There are occasions where a caption on your image doesn't jell with your layout, theme or style. If that is the case, don't be scared to leave it off. While ideally you want all three characteristics of your image to be covered, if you are missing a caption, but overall are impressing clients with your design, don't stress over it. 3: Set Your Alt Tags
An 'ALT tag' is shorthand text we use to refer to the ALT attribute within in the image.
ALT tags are used with screed readers to explain to sight disabled clients what this image represents. Its also a great way to (again) reinforce what this image represents to Google. Using best practices on your website and including ALT tags on all your images will mean your website has a strong accesability factor. ALT tags are NOT visible so you don't have to worry about moving your image or compromising your design. How To Set Image Tags
This step assumes you use Weebly as your website platform, html is shown below.
Setting image tags on your website
The HTML Way To Set Alt Tags On Your Images
If your website is hard coded HTML you will need to adjust the code behind your image to set your ALT Tag.
This is the html you image will use: <img src="myImage.jpg" alt="This is your ALT Tag text"> (There may be other attributes used in the tag)
NB: if you are fairly new to html remember that the <img> tag in html is one of the few tags that is self closing. IE: This tag <html></html> you can see is actually two parts, the open tag "<html>" and the close tag "</html>" The image tag won't work this way. It closes itself. So you open the tag like this "<img" apply your image attributes here and then to close the tag its simply a ">". You can't open and close an image tag like this "<img></img>" It won't work. |
By Jenny:Small business owner, web developer and programmer. Archives
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