So you want to write a great meta description?  There is a post on Google Webmaster Central Blog that outlines the basic dos and don’ts of the descriptions tags.  While the idea of your meta description tag actually affecting your site’s results ranking is still up in the air.  Everyone can agree that a great description tag has the ability to have more visitors click on your website.

Google suggests

• Putting up unique meta description for each one of your pages.
• Include information about the content that could not effectively be in the title.
• Use punctuation sparingly.
• Represent the content of your page truthfully with your description.

Using 100% unique content is always going to be the way to go.  This includes description tags as well.  Do not use the same description of all of the pages on your site.  Does each one of your pages cover the exact same topic?  That doesn’t look like a comprehensive site to any search engine.

Information that you couldn’t fit in the title is a great place to start with this tag.  If you are selling a product or several, this might be a place to give key information about your product. e.g. “Make: Mercedes   Model: G 500 AMG   Year: 2008  Price: $55,000.”  Try and take a step back and realize what information you think potential visitors want to know.

Always write using simple and descriptive words.  Try and stay away from too much punctuation.  If you are giving information about a book, colons, comas, parenthesis, italicized font, apostrophes; all of these can make the eyes “work” much harder to see the actual words and summary of what your page is offering

Writing your keywords over and over again is a very old trick.  This was done trying to persuade search engines pull these pages to the top of results.  This is an old trick and really no longer works.  I would even say this would hurt your ranking.  Spending more time and writing a descriptive tag will get you more click throughs and happier visitors.

These tips come straight from Google, so I find it best to follow what they preach.  There is always going to be a sneaky way or new trick that webmasters are going to try; however, I like to stay honest.  I think this will always keep me in good search engine standings with happier visitors.

I can’t tell you exactly when some of my sites basically died from Panda, and I can’t tell you for sure that is why my traffic sizzled up and burnt into a crisp life-less chip on the ground of Google’s “Crappy Sites Cell.”  I am really ticked off that a small, beautifully designed formerly well preforming site is now dead!  I could use four letter adjectives all day long; however, I don’t think that will get me back in the rankings.  So I am going to roll up my sleeves and take a look at what might have been the reason for my demise.

Panda explained

To put it simply, Panda is an algorithm that studies the ratings that humans give to website.  Panda watches and learns their dislikes and then employs its own formula to knock out sites that have the same characteristics that the humans ranked low.  Because Panda enforces a site wide penalty, if a percentage of your pages fall below “acceptable” your entire site will suffer.  So what are some obvious characteristics that are human-disliked?

Huge Template Footprint

We all know the sites; I see a lot of them by clicking on articles from Yahoo, the sites that have 10-15% original content above the fold.  Dodge that Adsense ad, manage to figure out which “X” to choose to close that pop-up ad that made it through, get all the way over to the scroll bar without touching anything- and bam! You get to see some words written by someone!  NTB is setup so that this does not happen with your site, unless you spend extra time repositioning the templates, so I am good on this.

Empty Page

Have you ever chosen a website, with a very impressive “authority site” name only to discover that all of the thousands of pages are basically empty except for a few links?  Frustrating, but this isn’t my issue either.

Overlapping and Repetitive Pages

Okay, this one might have me.  I am not the most pro-active about my content.  I focus mainly on just getting some up and making sure it is related.  Some writers believe that this is the issue.  Panda makes this mistake; having several articles or pages covering the same topic means: Content Farm.  I am going to readjust my pages to include some more not so highly related pages.  I will always believe that they more quality content I have, the better so this will be a win-win.

High Ad Ratio

I am going to included Adsense and Affiliate ads in this category.  No one really likes ads, I suppose they are just as annoying on the internet as they are on the TV or radio.  This is where we get to the conundrum; we want conversions, we want traffic.  Panda hates ads, Adsense wants ads everywhere.  How are we going to find a happy medium?

I am going to take a look and see which of my ad boxes are lowest preforming.  These will then be easy to take out and hopefully my users experience will grow (along with my ranking.)

These reasons and possibly a high bounce rate will affect a lot of websites, if not now, then soon.  I will be working tirelessly to get my bounce rate down on ALL of my pages and to fix some of the above issues that I think burnt my little site like the sun hitting an ant on Mercury in July.

Search Engine Optimization is one of my favorite parts of website building.  I think my enjoyment might stem from the fact that I like to do tasks that I know will further my sites along.  I know every time I post on a blog, especially a popular SEO blog, my backlink will be found fairly quickly and my sites will either gain foundation for being first position, or it will be on my way up the results latter.

So what are my favorite internet marketing blogs?

First off, my favorite- Shoemoney.  Shoe blogs about all different aspects of the affiliate world and he is proud to post that he writes over 90% of the posts himself.    When I first found his site, I was pretty excited that he was from Nebraska.  I grew up in rural Oklahoma, so I automatically felt a kinship.  (Of course we would get a long, 7 ½ hours away practically the same neighborhood!)

The rotating pictures of half-dressed girls threw me for a while; but that is easy to become blind to after a while.  Overall, Shoemoney is funny and is loaded with great information.  It is definitely a good read, exceptional backlinking potential, and he throws Giveaways and Prizes on a regular basis.  What is there not to love?

Now for the most relevant and insightful information;  Search Engine Land is the place you will want to go.  They have great posts on a daily basis that offers so much information about SEO and the internet community as a whole.  Most of the authors are “guest authors” and I say guest because they write for SEL; but they usually have their own blog.  Every post I have seen here has been pretty intellectual and well written, including this one by Greg Sterling.  This blog certainly gets its reader involved in every aspect of the internet game!

David Naylor is a great read from across the sea.  His site is up-to-date with everything Google and Search Engine.  His blog is certainly focused around SEO and getting organic search ranking.  About more than half of his posts are done by his employees who seem to have acquired his intellect and humor into their writing.  This is a visually and mentally stimulating publication that provides great knowledge about SEO.

Those are my favorites, other good ones to check out are SEOmoz, Copyblogger and  Entrepreneurs Journey.  Do you have a favorite Internet Marketing blog?  How about any type of blog that is a must daily read?

I was reading up on one of my favorite Internet Marketing blogs, Shoemoney and noticed a post about the new Click Bank requirements.  I have been seeing emails come through my account recently from Click Bank but haven’t paid much attention.  As always, Shoe did a great job at breaking down their new requirements in non-legal English.

I expect that all vendors have are already aware of these new requirements- and if they are not, well their product has been pulled as of midnight last night with the possibility that their account has been terminated.  As for us- Affiliates- we might have overlooked all of the emails assuming it didn’t apply to us.  So first thing first; sign onto your Click Bank account and make sure all of your vendors are still up and running!  Secondly, make sure your sites meet the new standards required for affiliates.  Here are their new guidelines.

The most noticeable stipulation, False Scarcity has become pretty popular in the I.M. world.  It is one of the basic motivational marketing maneuvers that we, as a society are well aware of and also fall prey to.  Why must they feel the need to make this a requirement for affiliates to follow?  I agree; it is fairly obnoxious to see “ONLY 3 LEFT, NO MORE BEING MADE!”  However, are the FTC and legal eagles really going to force us to dumb down everything?  I will reference the movie, Idiocracy.  I am afraid this movie has a point… There are several readers on Shoe’s blog that left comments describing how disgusted they are about Click Bank having to force people to be ethical.  My bleeding heart agrees; but not entirely…

I give myself quite the grin when I see the “Box Tops for Schools” being promoted with middle aged, average looking mother talking about how much she loves her children, wants to make sure they perform well in school and help support that school; which she does by giving them Betty Crocker Brownies?!?  I mean come on, huge corporations can use so much psychological play to convince parents that brownies will help their children- by showing love AND helping out the school?  Why aren’t their programs like, “Bring in an apple core…”  I just think it is a little annoying that we can’t use “Almost out of Stock” but it is fine to shove sugared preservatives down an un-knowing child by pulling on a stressed out parent’s heart.

Perhaps this is a complicated example; however, it is quite clear through my eyes.  I’m glad Click Bank is establishing some new rules of conduct for it’s vendors, it can get pretty sticky with the tricks that some companies (especially online) pull.   I am definitely not an impressive and established vendor or affiliate in the Click Bank world so I appreciate their concern for consumers.  I just hope that this doesn’t make it even more difficult for newer internet marketers.