Ask Kalena

Hi Everyone

From early days learning SEO, I went ahead and did all my meta descriptions with a bit of blurb about the page but my *Guru* has told me this is incorrect and I should include only the title of the page in the meta description, eg “Antique Dining Chairs” whereas I had put in “Antique Dining Chairs – over 500 chairs on display at the Glebe Antique Centre. Dining chairs to match your table, occasional chairs for that special place in your home”.

Any thoughts before I go and change everything yet again?

Christine

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Hi Christine

From where I’m sitting, your *guru* is wrong. Remember, your meta description tag is often used as the snippet on the search results pages to describe your site.

So apart from including keywords, it has to do the job of convincing people to click on it. A nonsensical list of keywords is not going to convince people to click so you have to balance it out with an appealing sentence, preferably including a call-to-action or reason to click.

Yes, it’s important to put your keywords at the start of the tag if you can, but you have up to 160 characters in that tag indexed by search engines, so you should use the space to your advantage. Having a short, unimaginative meta description or simply copying your title tag is not going to make any difference to your overall rankings and is more likely to turn your potential visitors off.

Google admitted that it no longer considers the meta description tag in their ranking algorithm anyway, so, other search engines aside, the main job of the tag in Google SERPs is to convince people to click on the link and visit your site.

Put it this way: if you were in the market for an antique chair and you saw the following two listings in Google, which one would you click on?

• Site1.com – “Antique Dining Chairs.”
  
• Site2.com – “Antique Dining Chairs – over 500 chairs on display at the Glebe Antique Centre. Dining chairs to match your table, occasional chairs for that special place in your home.“

I’m thinking Site2.com – am I right? And – oh look! The longer tag managed to include *dining chairs* twice and a whole bunch of other keyword phrases as well: *dining chairs Glebe*, *chairs Glebe*, *occasional chairs*, *Antique(s) Glebe*.

Case closed.

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Hi Kalena,

I have been working on some new YouTube clips and have been trying to add them to our company channel we opened a couple of years ago. Problem is that I’ve forgotten our YouTube login and no-one here at the office remembers the username or password.

I have had a lot of problems with Gmail as every time I try to get onto a mail address it rejects the password. It will not accept a new password when I attempt a try.  This has left me with 12 or more email addresses.

I understand all the videos have to be in one channel, but due to the lack of support and communication, I have a mess. I know when it comes to search this is important. I’ve managed to put a new video up on Facebook and also uploaded to google+ and what I thought was my YouTube channel but I was wrong. I tried to find out answers in Google Q & A but no luck for me.

Can you help?

Thanks
Terry

Hi Terry

You can login to YouTube using either your Google email address associated with the account as the username OR the YouTube channel name as the username. But if you’ve already got another Google account open, it will assume you are logged in already and ask you for a password for *that* account. So you need to log out of all Gmail and Google+ accounts and any Google programs such as AdWords and then go to YouTube.com and login from scratch.

It can be confusing, especially if you’ve got multiple Google email accounts or if you’re using Google Apps, so I would advise following the help prompts or browsing the YouTube help forums. There seem to be a lot of people in those forums with the same issue. If you’re still stuck, try contacting Google Support directly.

Kalena

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Hi Kalena

I regularly use a tool that I think is super useful but one of my colleagues believes it is bogus. The tool is Alexa.com, have you heard of it? The site seems to show really good audience demographic data and I’ve used it quite often to give clients visitor statistics and a ball-park value for their web sites and their competitors.

The site has been around a long time and I’ve shown my friend the reports I’ve generated, but he said that the data is exaggerated. After talking with my colleague, I’m concerned about whether I should be using it. What’s your opinion of Alexa?

Bruce

Hi Bruce

I’m with your colleague on Alexa – I am not a fan. In my opinion, the information they provide is completely skewed and inaccurate because of the way they gather their data and install their toolbar. Sure they’ve been around since 1996 and sure, they’re owned by Amazon but that’s about as impressive as the stats get I’m afraid. You might want to read these past articles about Alexa:

If You Cite Compete or Alexa For Anything Besides Making Fun of Them, You’re a Moron

3 Reasons Why Alexa Sucks (And They Know It!)

Alexa Says YouTube is Now Bigger Than Google. Alexa is Useless.

Why is Alexa Still Relevant?

My view isn’t just based on these articles either. I downloaded the Alexa Toolbar and reviewed it for several years before discounting it. In my opinion, you’re better off installing Google Analytics and generating more accurate statistical reports for your clients.

Kalena

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Dear Kalena,

We have a plant seller nursery website that contains mostly product and contact information etc. How can I attract more links to my site?

Thanks in advance,
Trish

Dear Trish,

In order for your site to be considered ‘linkworthy’ you need to build some good-quality, industry-specific content that people in your niche market will find useful. If your site is purely product-based there are fewer reasons for other sites to link to your site.

Building links is all about obtaining online referrals. A good link building strategy considers internet users and website owners. The ultimate aim is to obtain more referrals for your site from other website owners and ultimately to get more customers to your site.

Think about the people that view your website (in your case plant growers and gardening enthusiasts) what would they find useful? What would make them want to revisit your site? A searchable database containing photographs and general information about the plants that you sell would be an appealing addition. Or an article library/blog - filled with gardening ideas, advice and resources could keep your customers coming back to your site again and again.

When it comes to attracting inbound links, content is king. If your site contains good-quality, industry-specific information, people will come to your website not only to buy things, but to find information. Also other websites may refer to information contained on your site in order to be associated with your quality content. In this way you will develop an authoritive presence within your industry that will attract good quality inbound links over time.

Sarah Parker
Parker Communications

Hi Kalena

I have a question. I talked to my Google rep who once said that putting my company’s name in an ad violates Google’s terms. However, in another post on here, you seem to suggest bidding on a brand name is also a violation is that correct? I was under the assumption that was common practice. Is it not? If I could report that to Google, that is important information.

Dom

Hi Dom

I’m not sure if you are referring to your own ads or those created by your competitors, but putting your own company name in your ad is certainly not a violation, it’s encouraged, particularly if yours is a well known brand/name. If you follow this link about Use of Trademarks in AdWords, you’ll find an authorization form you can submit to be able to use your brand / trademark throughout your account.

Now use of your trademark by competitors is where things get complicated. It differs between region and differs again between ad text versus keyword bids. Google actually opened up trademark keyword bidding two years ago, however AdWord’s trademark policy is now dependent on the region your trademark is registered in and the region/s your billing account is located in. So here are the main regional trademark policies:

1. In certain regions, Google allow some ads to show with a trademark in ad text if the ad is from a reseller or from an informational site. There is a separate trademark policy for resellers and informational sites.
2. For regions that are NOT included under Google’s trademark policy for resellers and informational sites, if their investigation finds that the advertiser is using the trademark in ad text, Google will require the advertiser to remove the trademark and prevent them from using it in ad text in the future.
3. In most regions covered by the Trademark policy (including UK, USA and Canada), Google will investigate ad text only. They will not disable keywords in response to a trademark complaint in these regions. Furthermore, their investigation will only affect ads served on or by Google rather than those served on partner sites.
4. In EU and EFTA regions, Google does not prevent the selection of trademarks as keywords. However, in response to a complaint, they will do a limited investigation as to whether a keyword (in combination with particular ad text) is confusing as to the origin of the advertised goods and services.
5. In some limited regions, Google may investigate the use of trademarks in ad text, in keywords, or in both ad text and keywords. These regions include: Australia / Brazil / China / Hong Kong / Macau / New Zealand / North Korea / South Korea / Taiwan

Because Australia and New Zealand are included in the above list (and these are the countries in which I operate), I have witnessed a few keyword trademark infringements and represented some clients who lodged complaints procedures based on this policy.

So the short answer is, unless they have your explicit permission, your competitors generally aren’t allowed to use your brand/name in their own ads, but if you’re located outside the limited regions mentioned above, they ARE allowed to bid on your brand/name as a keyword. But it’s not all bad news – it means that you are allowed to bid on their brand/name as well.

Hope this clarifies things!

Kalena

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