New Social Media Site + META Tags for User Profiles

[NiallSmith]

I'm currently in the process of building a social media site and was deciding whether or not to add META descriptions/keywords for individual user profiles.

After reviewing Facebook, I noticed that in the META Description field, user profile pages just inherited the values for Facebook (there were no META keywords); and, when I reviewed LinkedIn, there was no META description/keywords at all.

After this investigation, I figured it might be a question best addressed to the SEO community. With that, what do you guys think?

If you were building a social media site, would you have META description + META keywords for each user's profile? If so, what would be the best way to optimize the individual profiles so they rank highly within the search engines?

[KaneJamison]

I would skip meta keywords - not worth your time to implement something that is dynamic on each page.

You could choose to skip meta description, and let the search engines figure it out on their own.

The most important question to ask yourself is, what search terms would those profile pages be ranking for, and what would that searcher be looking for? I'm guessing that 90% of people will be searching for the person's name, so your page would be showing up in the results for "Kane Jamison", for example.

Take a look at what some of the big social networks choose to display:

Facebook:

"Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet."

Twitter:

No Meta Description

LinkedIn:

"View Kane Jamison's professional profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world's largest business network, helping professionals like Kane Jamison discover inside connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts, and business partners."

Google+:

They use a format containing the following: "Full name - Profile Headline - Occupation - Employer - City, State"

It looks like this in practice: "Kane Jamison - SEO, Link Builder, Website Manager, Permaculturalist, and Urban Homesteader - Online Marketing, SEO & Web Design - Hood Web Management - Seattle, WA"

Quora:

No Meta Description. Interestingly they do use an Open Graph (OG) description for Facebook purposes.

If I were you, I'd find a happy medium between customized (containing name and description) and general (super concise info about your social network, similar to Facebook and LinkedIn's meta descriptions).

What type of social network is it?

[NiallSmith]

The social network is targeted towards business professionals and companies.