Using Meta Description Tags

Ever wonder how Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+ makes (or not makes) your posts pretty when you share a website link? Social media sites rely on meta description tags on websites to help figure out what to add in that preview box under your post. If a website has a poorly written description or no description at all, the preview box will look pretty boring or embarrassingly sad.

 

Facebook Preview Box: About STC

What about STC? This description is not helpful.

 

Meta tags are helpful for search engine optimization (SEO). They are also great when used correctly for both keywords and description! People who share your information on social media sites will love you forever if you properly write a meta description. The added benefit is that you will get better search results too.  Not doing so leaves us to wonder if your content is useful to be posted on social media or if we can understand what you are writing about when we browse search results.

 

Google Search Results

What is going on with this search result entry???

 

If a book can be judged by its cover, a webpage can be judged by the meta description when Facebook, Google+, or LinkedIn parses it before you click Post. It’s all about appearances! How tidy (or untidy) your website looks will determine how successful it is against the countless websites out there.

 

Facebook Preview Box: STC Keynote from STC Summit

Notice that the name repeats itself in the description. Facebook is scraping data from the website to generate the description content. Why do we need redundancy in the redundant department office?

 

In order to make your descriptions look better online,  you need to add this meta description tag to each webpage between the <head> </head> tags.

<meta name=”description” content=”Replace this content with a carefully crafted description of the page using fewer than or up to 155 characters and spaces.”>

Social media websites pull information from a webpage that you are about to share in order to make your post more interesting. Those sites read the information from the meta description tag and sometimes chooses an image from the page to insert in the preview box for your post.

Most content management systems have the ability to create descriptions, yet most do not come with this feature installed. Instead, I use a WordPress plugin called WordPress SEO by Yoast to add metadata to my website. Before publishing a post or page, I include a short description and keywords. The plugin also helps you out!

Here are some examples of meta descriptions tags as seen on Facebook and Google, both good and bad.

 STC Election

Facebook Preview Box: STC Election

The description is great, but it’s poorly worded. I would not post this page on Facebook using that description. Even the title is not helpful in this case.

 

Google Search Results for STC Election

This search result looks better, but Google had to scrape that information from the webpage instead of relying on meta description tags.

 

 STC.org website

Facebook Preview Box: STC Website

This description is great, but it is missing a period.

 

 STC Rochester

Facebook Preview Box: About STC Rochester

This description of what STC Rochester is about is great, but it’s truncated…

 

 STC New Mexico Kachina

Facebook Preview Box: STC Kachina Chapter

STC Kachina has a simple and straight-forward description.

 

 Write Techie

Another good description preview.

WriteTechie (this website) is another example of a good description as seen in the Facebook preview box.

 

Meta descriptions are quite helpful for people who may be interested in your website.

Meta descriptions are quite helpful for people who may be interested in your website.

 

 WordPress

Facebook Preview Box: WordPress

WordPress has the best description preview I’ve seen so far.

New Facebook View

Earlier this week, Facebook revealed its new look for the News Feed.

I know what you may think, why change it again? According to Facebook, they wanted to make the content consistent across both mobile and desktop environments so that users can focus more on stories from people and Pages.

The new Facebook view is not necessarily new, but was in the works for several months. If you have a developer account, the “new” view has been there for some time and tweaked a bit before being officially announced.

My impression about using the new design for months now is how easy and uncluttered the feed is. It also shows improved visibility for brand and Page owners by displaying photos that fill the entire width of the feed if the photo is as wide or wider than the feed itself. This also applies to photos pulled directly from a website or blog and works both on the desktop and mobile versions.

Facebook New Feed - Desktop

Notice that the desktop feed shows a preview of the website, including having it display across the entire width of the feed.

The only difference between the mobile and desktop version is the website preview box pulled from the shared website does not display on mobile views.

Facebook New Feed - Mobile

Notice that the mobile feed does not contain any information under the picture.

Other than that, I prefer the new improvements. At least when I make a post with an attractive graphic or image, it will gather other people’s attention faster than before.

Attend the 2014 Mid-Atlantic TechComm Conference

Have you heard of the Cloud? Do you live on the Cloud? How do I get into the Cloud? Find out more!

Sunshine in the clouds

Soar into Cloud technology

I will be presenting, “Seeking Sunshine in Cloud Technology,” which will discuss how our profession can use Cloud technology to give us a competitive edge. How can we soar into the Cloud successfully without fear of being washed out and hung up to dry? I will talk about ways to plan, transition, and use Cloud technology and keep up to speed with the demands of our clients, customers, and our audience.

If you live in the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area, or within a few hours away of Philly, I encourage you to attend the STC Philadelphia Metro Chapter’s Mid-Atlantic Technical Communication Conference on Saturday, March 22, 2014.

STC Philadelphia Metro Chapter

STC Philadelphia Metro Chapter

This full-day conference features an array of technical communication topics to learn from. Speakers include locally and nationally known technical communicators. Many of them have presented at other conferences, such as the STC Annual Summit and LavaCon.

I  arrive Friday afternoon in Baltimore and plan to present in Philadelphia on Saturday. Then, I will travel to New York on Sunday and return home to Albuquerque Monday afternoon. If you would like to meet, please let me know and I would be happy to visit over food, coffee, or a tourist attraction.

See you soon!