# Need help with META Descriptions



## AliDec (Sep 26, 2010)

I really need help with what i should be putting in my META descriptions. I really havent got a clue what i should be putting in it and my site has been almost 18 months since work started on it, now all that is stopping us from going live is the META stuff. For example most of our t shirts will be focusing on the stag/hen party scene. So i have this t shirt as an example, what should my META description be for it?


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## johnbol1 (Aug 19, 2010)

meta description is leterally that, the description of the item with perhaps a little more info. I would meta that as , Printed **** (or Sh*T ) happens funny Tee shirt, Suitable for stag do hen do or just every day wear, Fast delivery custom prints 100% cotton short sleeve tee.

Remember to get in the actual title with just a little mor einfo. If in doubt find a site similar to yours and view page source to get a general idea (do not copy) Google will penalise you if it thinks you are copying another site.
keep it original, takes a little time but pays in the end
john


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## printingray (Apr 4, 2012)

Its up to you, Meta is always related to the site niche if your selling some specific category tees then use Meta about that and keywords also about that.


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## Riderz Ready (Sep 18, 2008)

18 months working on a site to sell apparel? 

SEO is very overated in a saturated market like t-shirts unless you have a very specific niche. The odds of getting in the top 1o pages is close to zero and who really goes past the first 5?

You need to sell, market, promote your brand actively. Creating a web site, doing a little SEO will get you nothing.


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## AliDec (Sep 26, 2010)

Riderz Ready said:


> 18 months working on a site to sell apparel?
> 
> SEO is very overated in a saturated market like t-shirts unless you have a very specific niche. The odds of getting in the top 1o pages is close to zero and who really goes past the first 5?
> 
> You need to sell, market, promote your brand actively. Creating a web site, doing a little SEO will get you nothing.


18 months was not our fault, well not directly. We chose a local company to build our site for us and the promised it in 1 month. Well over 1 year and a court case later we finally got it from them but still it need work done to finish it. We just dont have much time or experience with this at the minute so that is why it is taking us a little longer than we hoped to get it live once we got it from them.


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## Riderz Ready (Sep 18, 2008)

AliDec said:


> 18 months was not our fault, well not directly. We chose a local company to build our site for us and the promised it in 1 month. Well over 1 year and a court case later we finally got it from them but still it need work done to finish it. We just dont have much time or experience with this at the minute so that is why it is taking us a little longer than we hoped to get it live once we got it from them.


What you should learn is a web site if never done. It is ever evolving. If you wait for it to be near perfect it will never launch. You could have easily had a Wordpress site up in a matter of a few days while working on your eventual site. The lost time, sales and exposure waiting to launch the prefect site will never be recovered. Second it really is secondary to really selling and marketing. Web presence is great but in many cases people use it as a substitute to actually selling/marketing.


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## decotools (Sep 14, 2012)

I wouldn't put too much time and effort into getting your meta descriptions perfect. As you can see in the article at Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking Google doesn't look at the meta keywords and only "sometimes" uses the description.

Focus on getting on page content relevant to your audience and you will be fine.


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## AliDec (Sep 26, 2010)

decotools said:


> I wouldn't put too much time and effort into getting your meta descriptions perfect. As you can see in the article at Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking Google doesn't look at the meta keywords and only "sometimes" uses the description.
> 
> Focus on getting on page content relevant to your audience and you will be fine.


What do you mean the page content and how do I do that?


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## decotools (Sep 14, 2012)

AliDec said:


> What do you mean the page content and how do I do that?


Simply the content on the page that a human can read. Your basic product and company description. Make it talk to your audience in a normal way. If your audience likes, Google will too.


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

decotools is absolutely correct. Meta tag keywords is useless and description is ONLY used as a short snippet of your website when you don't have enough content on your site. It has not affect on your SEO.

I wrote a couple of blog posts a while ago on these topics that might help:

The myth of keywords meta tag

Content is king when it comes to SEO | DecoNetwork Blog

Most important of all use content a customer might be looking for. i.e. when you have a product ensure there is a clear product name like "Men's 100% cotton t-shirt". Include a detailed description and mention sizes and colors. These are all things customers could search for in Google.

All the best.


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## AliDec (Sep 26, 2010)

so when you search in google for example for "printed t shirts" you get all the results. Underneath them you have what i would call an intro to the site, which seems to be a short description of what they do. How or where do we put that for it to show for our site when it is found by google. Is it a description they have used for all their items or is it a description for the home page. Sorry if i seem to be talking c*ap but i seem to get more confused the more i look into this.


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

It can seem confusing  This is why so many people prey on companies and convince them to fork over thousands for what seems to be wizardry.

The short description you see below the title of a website in a Google search result can come from two source:

1. If your website has ample text on it then Google will use some of this text as the description. Google prefers this as this is the real text on your site therefore what your website is really about.

2. If your website lacks real text then Google will look at your <meta name="description"> tag.

However, this is important. The content in your <meta name="description"> will NOT affect your SEO ranking. Here is why.

An adult website that gets $0.05 every time soneone visits their site through banner displays wants to get as many people visiting as possible. So they make a website with a URL that sounds like it could be about tshirts. They don't use any text on their site and only have a collection of this dubious banners. However, they make their <meta name="description"> say "Best t-shirt printing service in Sydney specializing in Mens, womens and kids tshirts. 24 hour service". This has some OK keywords in it which could, in theory, help in SEO. i.e. t-shirt and tshirt, printing, 24 hour, Sydney, printing service, etc. These are all things someone might search for in Sydney. i.e. "24 hour tshirt printing".

Therefore if Google used this to determine what the website is about then an unsuspecting visiting could think they are about to enter a t-shirt website because Google presented this site in a search result for "24 hour tshirt printing", but will be shocked when they see what the site is really about.

So write it for the purpose of informing what your website is about in Google. BUT, even better - make real text on your website pages SOMEONE to show otherwise.

The <meta name="description"> comes useful for a minimalistic home page. That's fine! Just make sure you have other pages within you site that has good content. Make a dedicated page talking (in text) about your printing service. Ensure your products have great names and descriptions, and always ensure what ever you write is written from the perspective of you customers. They may not know industry lingo to speak their language.

Good luck


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## shempy (Sep 25, 2009)

Meta info can be tricky. Just make sure you dont have a "nofollow" on your page. One of my clients was pushing his blog for like a year and inside wordpress a hidden nofollow was listed. Took it out and poof! Started showing up in the results.


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

shempy said:


> One of my clients was pushing his blog for like a year and inside wordpress a hidden nofollow was listed. Took it out and poof! Started showing up in the results.


What a disaster!  Yes. They are not good...


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## AliDec (Sep 26, 2010)

shempy said:


> Meta info can be tricky. Just make sure you dont have a "nofollow" on your page. One of my clients was pushing his blog for like a year and inside wordpress a hidden nofollow was listed. Took it out and poof! Started showing up in the results.


 what is a nofollow and how do I know if it is there


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" /> is used to tell a search engine like Google not to index the page. You might want to use this on pages you don't want to appear in Google like private pages, or members pages where only members can see the data.

If you use this tag on your page page then Google will ignore your site and this would be had for your SEO.

Some forums use this automatically in their links to stop people pasting links hoping to improve their SEO through links.


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