Sorry for the dramatic title but my recent test with the All-in-One SEO WordPress plugin seems to have verified my thoughts: the meta descriptions aren’t being displayed in search results, correctly.
Any WordPress blog effected by this is losing out on incredible amounts of search engine optimization aka traffic and potentially sales.
The Problem
Take a look at the screenshot below of the Google search results for my site, PLRArticlesNow.com:
As you can see, any blog post doesn’t pull up the unique meta description I’ve created for each. The pages are fine but anything that is blog post format is pulling the first line of the post which, as you may know, may not be optimized for your keywords depending on how you write.
My suspicions were confirmed after I had recently setup my new blog, CareerInsider.net, even with WordPress and the All-in-One SEO plugin fully updated (thinking it would fix the problem).
Considering that your blog may have hundreds of posts floating out there on the web; you could be missing out on hundreds (maybe thousands) of website visitors because of this oversight and bug – and sales.
In terms of SEO, you always want to aim for your main keyword in the title, description and URL but because of this bug, descriptions aren’t showing up so your site is only performing at half rate compared to if it were correctly optimized.
The Solution
Of course, not all blogs may be affected by this. I have noticed that some of the old blog posts on my sites are looking fine and this may be from an older version of WordPress and the plugin (when WP switched to 3.0 they started using the wp_head tag in the code and there seems to be a double injection of the description tag).
To get started, do a “site:www.yourdomain.com” search on Google.
Browse through the listings and if you see a description like “this is my post about this and that and …” than things aren’t going right.
I’m not pointing any fingers but the bug seems to have been around for a while now and there’s not much information (or work) being done about it. I’m not sure why I (or others) never seemed to have noticed this.
I think about how many potential people I’ve lost from finding my site and it puts a knot in my stomach – I’m sure you can share the same concern.
So, what do you do to fix this? Well, best way that I’ve found is to switch plugins.
The WordPress SEO by Yoast has been around for some time and I’ve used it on niche sites but I’m definitely shifting back to it because it’s much more detailed and should fix the problem with description tags – it also comes highly recommended from other website owners and friends. In fact, the Yoast plugin even has an import feature so the transition should be easy for you.
Alternatively, there’s a plugin called Missing SEO Data that’s specifically used for getting the meta information back.
Realistically, the two together should work wonders for getting everything back but I would highly recommend at least making the switch over to Yoast in the meantime.
Test in Progress
At the time of writing this, I’m still making the transition of SEO plugins and waiting for things to reindex. I’m going to start with PLRArticlesNow.com and the, when things check out, I’m going to then apply it to Murlu and CareerInsider (both currently using All-in-One SEO).
I’m not saying that AIOSEO dropped the ball here but this is pretty big considering that it’s long since been on most of the top WordPress plugin lists out there – it’s time for an update, I say.
I’ll keep you informed by editing this post as things progress …
By the way, please spread the word on this one or make the correct updates to your clients websites because just think about how much traffic is being lost because blog posts aren’t being indexed to their full extent.
Hey murlu,
Amazing post as always!
Thanks for pointing out that. I have only one wordpress blog for one of my mini niche site but I did not ever notice that!
I run some test.some old post are good but some new post having this problem!
Waiting for your update
No problem buddy.
I just caught this over the weekend – I don’t even know how long it’s been like this because it’s something you don’t normally check. In fact, I was wondering if this was the reason why my PLR site was getting so little traction despite having nearly 60 blog posts. I’m going to update the post when things roll over and maybe take a look at the traffic reports as well.
This is why I use WordPress SEO by Joost de Vaulk aka Yoast. I wouldn’t bother with AIOSEO. Yoast is a well respected and trusted member of the SEO community and his plugin is amazing.
Why bother with anything else?
Just made the big switch to the Yoast plugin. I’m waiting for things to get updated but I can’t imagine how many bloggers are affected by this – hopefully word spreads out. Thanks for swinging by Ian.
I use Genesis for most of my sites and I haven’t tested this part yet, but have been happy with my results. You do realize Google decides whether or not to show that meta description as it sees fit right?
Yeah, seems to pick it up when a description isn’t on point but seems like too much of a trend to see that anything blog post isn’t coming up yet pages are fine. I switched over one blog and things seems to be fixing itself now with Yoast. Genesis is just sexy as hell, maybe a future project will have that
A huge effect for clickthrough rates (rather than rankings) this. Shame.
It’s why I’d always use WordPress SEO. It also encapsulates various other plugins, making your site run smoother.
Definitely, seeing that you want that keyword in the description especially since Google bolds it when people are searching – I can see where it could have a major impact on CTR.
Have you checked to make sure this isn’t actually a theme issue? A meta description is a meta description, no matter which plugin you use. If something is causing duplicate descriptions in the head of your posts and pages, that’s most likely because you have 2 different sources pushing descriptions into the head (more than likely, your theme includes meta descriptions based on your posts, and a second description is pushed into the header by the plugin).
If you look at the source code for your PLR Articles site, you’ll see that you’re still having the same issue. Your theme is outputting meta keywords and a meta description directly below the charset definition at the top of your head section, and Yoast’s plugin is outputting a second set of keywords & description near the bottom of your head.
It could certainly be a theme issue but it seems to be this way for three of my main blogs and after doing a check on a few other people’s site, it shows up the same way for them too which use completely different themes than what I’m running. I hear there could be a problem because of the WP_Head tag that got added in the 3.0 release of WP but it also seems that one of my older niche blogs are effected by it too even though I haven’t updated it in ages. I’ll dig further into removing the lines and getting things fixed up – glad to have a techie here to share a bit more details – much appreciated!
Murray,
Man, what a find. I have been using ALL in one SEO for a long while and I never caught this. (as I am sure many, many others didn’t)
I almost feel like you are breaking the Watergate scandal of SEO. All we need is AIOS to have some sort of hidden tape that brings into question their knowledge of this.
(I could insert a “Deep Throat” joke here…but that would be going to far. This is a family show)
Seriously, though, good catch man, and thanks for sharing this with us.
Yeah, your site was actually one that I was trying to verify with because I know how much you’ve pushed out over the years – a lot of the descriptions are showing up funky and I can’t imagine how much more traffic you could be getting if things were fixed up. I don’t want to point fingers but most of the threads on the AIOSEO board never got approved even though people were asking this same question and the only way to get it fixed would be to hire either the developers or an outside person to fix up the head code.
I have used both AIOSEO and WP SEO by Yoast and found WP SEO by Yoast to be superior in most every way. It’s superior in its simplicity for the beginner and the Advanced tools for the WP user looking for a bit more kick. I would recommend the transition from AIOSEO to Yoast for anyone, if for no other reason that it pushes the user to be very focused in keyword/phrase choice. I am not sure what the root of the delivery problem is in your case, whether it is a theme problem as mentioned above or a performance error. In either case, thanks for alerting the numerous WP users to the issue.
I’m definitely going to be specifically promoting Yoast from now on and I hope some of the other bloggers that bring up plugins will do the same because of these general problems. I’m really liking the plugin at the moment, it took a bit of time to figure out some of the features but there are a couple of great tutorials on how to best use it on the Yoast site which is definitely helpful and detailed about SEO at large.
I’m not sure whether this is a problem with AIOSEO, or it’s rather a change in the Google’s way of showing the results.
I noticed that if you search for your article name (try to google: “private label rights articles for your online projects”), it shows the correct description. Only when you search for “site: plrarticlesnow.com” Google shows the beginning of the article instead of your chosen description.
I am not a SEO expert, just tried this and got this results, so guys please verify it and tell me if I’m wrong. I don’t want to freak out (as I initially did when I read the article) and begin to fix it if it’s not broken
Cheers!
Hey Cristi,
Just did a general search for “Email Marketing and PLR Content: A Dynamic Duo” a post I have on the PLR blog and it seems to be cut off in the description still:
http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1ASUT_enUS443US443&gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Email+Marketing+and+PLR+Content%3A+A+Dynamic+Duo
I’m hoping that the switch to Yoast will get things reindexed soon. I have about 60 blog posts on the PLR site and yet traffic is super low; I’m wondering if this was one of the major problems because I created great content and optimized each for their main keywords. I wonder if this is one of the reasons why some of my epic posts here barely have traction – I have one uber article on creating ebooks that’s very detailed yet I was being outranked by sites with just 200 word blog posts. Hopefully things shift around.
Hi, Murray. The search that you made in your reply still shows that you are wrong. If you search the name of the article, Google displays the description that you set with the SEO plugin, NOT the beginning of the article. You can double check with all the articles that you gave as examples in your picture:
1. http://bit.ly/pIPHtl
2. http://bit.ly/qpH6RK
3. http://bit.ly/pm2dA0
You say that you already made the swich to Yoast, and Google hasn’t reindexed you. So you (and your readers) have still time to verify what I wrote, and convince yourselves. I made some tests on my blog (I have AIOSEO, and everything seems to be ok, as long as I look for a specific article, and not “site: http:// myblogadress.com”)
Well, I don’t argue the fact that Yoast may be a better plugin than AIOSEO, but come on! Anyone verified what I wrote?
So glad you posted this. I saw it just serendipitously in a RT by @Nicholas_Cardot. I was researching this problem on last Friday and found no resolution. Our descriptions used to work, but they’re not COMPLETELY gone. It’s not even taking the default first 160 characters of the post. Will try Yoast.
Glad I could help out Jon and hopefully other bloggers can pick up on this because I see it to be quite a big deal. In fact, I hope those businesses offering websites to clients through WordPress realize this because that’s a lot of business being lost if they aren’t getting the rankings they deserve. Thanks for swinging by and taking action
I’ve just checked site:www.domain.com on Google and my meta descriptions seem to be appearing as I specified them when editing the articles. I’m using version 1.6.13.4. What about everyone else?
man, don’t tell me that?! Dagnabbit – now I need to go and sort out ummmm 4000 sites!
Actually, it’s all good – because as pathetic as it is – I always write the first line of my post with both Google and the ‘excerpt’ in mind.
Sweet.
Thanks for such a detailed post – really did your homework here and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt something that I am going to pretend I did not hear. (LOL – ignorance is bliss sometimes)
Two quick comments. But first, you should know I’m on my phone, so I’m not bothering with the lengthy backround and citations that would validate my comments. I can only say that I’ve been doing SEO for almost 10 years now, and I’m currently the Director of SEO Innovation for Catalyst Online in NYC. Hopefully that will lend credibility.
1. Google pulling snippets different than what you gave SEO All in 1 has nothing to do with the plugin. Google overrides based on what it thinks is most related to the query. See what description shows with another query.
2. You don’t need a keyword in the description. It don’t help your rankigs.
Best,
Dan Cristo
Both of your points are spot on. Google can still display a different set of text than what you have in the meta description. Depending on what the person searched for, the text that Google displays may be different showing results that would pertain to the search term.
Good meta descriptions are helpful in that they can increase CTR, give users a better understanding of what the page would be about, and hopefully improve the overall experience of the site, and although these factors could effect rankings, the actual descriptions themselves, unless lacking or duplicate, won’t effect rankings directly.
I think that i know that fore things that can make your blog successful in SEO . I see no end the money that can be made if you have these skills . So what are the 4 most Internet skills.
1. Design
2. Coding
3. Writing
4. Online Marketing
I have to agree that Yoast WordPress SEO right now is the best plugin for WordPress blogs that are concerned with the latest SEO techniques. I’ve chatted with Yoast and he is doing amazing things with his plugin and keeps making updates as new items are coming out like rel=”author” tag for Google+ and Open Graph meta data in the head including Admin and App Ids.
However, I’m wondering if the issue you had with AIOSEO is that you have the small box unchecked that says ‘turn off excerpts for description’, which is the very last item on the plugin under the advanced options section. If you click on the ‘advance options’ section you’ll see a small box at the very bottom. If this is not checked, then AIOSEO will use the first couple of lines from your posts as the description. If you don’t want this to happen you need to make sure that the small box is checked. If this is checked, then your unique descriptions that you wrote should appear in the meta description field and would solve your problem without having to migrate to a new plugin.
Although, Yoast plugin is still better and has more features to optimize your site with.
The author of this post is SO WRONG… Dude, Google shows the snippets upon it’s choice, not what you put in the meta description… Both plugins will give you the exact same meta tag.
If you’re gonna blame someone, do the research first.
I think this guy is right. I looked at my pages source code and as far as I can tell the description is perfect, although the my index pages have another description.
Anyways I will also install Yoast WordPress SEO and see if any changes will take place.