1st SEO SPNS Meeting: Meta Descriptions

Note:

I’m starting a satirical SEO series that will continue by popular demand, maybe even unpopular too!

Meet the SPNS, an intrepid & selfless committee, formed to make SEO easy to understand.

Let me know what you think…

And so convened the 1st meeting of the Simple as Possible but No Simpler (SPNS) Committee, formed to make SEO easy to understand yet not too easy depending on the issue of course.

Restricted to experts, 1,321,354 members participated and 1,659,422 were tentative or said “it depends” if they could attend.

A man with exquisite facial hair, though mostly ridiculing SEO over the last few years, was unanimously voted in as Chairman.

“Welcome to our first meeting,” said the Chairman. “We plan to meet as often as Google makes a core update, so we may need to begin another shortly.” The Chairman then quickly blessed himself.

“But let’s discuss our foremost issue: creating a definitive list of SEO ranking factors. However, we’ll simplify by starting with what does not matter. Since the overlords have stated that meta descriptions are not a factor, we’ll remove it.”

Murmurs and nods of agreement spread among the group. After a second though, perhaps even two, shouts and gestures of violent dissent arose from the very same people.

“All true SEOs know for certain,” said one, “that clickthrough rates from the SERPs affect organic rankings. A good meta description having keywords from the search query is compelling, so this is obviously an indirect factor?”

Another said, “Yet Google may badly rewrite it, so it can be a non-factor. But we all know this only happens when SEOs fail to address every possible keyword in the page’s content!”

“Let’s make things clear,” replied the Chairman, “we’ll keep the meta description but annotate that it’s indirectly affecting results directly and sometimes a non-factor too.”

Everyone immediately supported this conclusion. Unfortunately, a core update indeed had just gone live. The committee erupted into pure chaos, a scene of unimaginable horror and panic…

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