Software assisted meta data

[nchachula]

I was recently contacted by an SEO firm that did a search on my site and said it had a low index. Out of 5,000+ pages only 800 keywords was ranking. They said there is much improvement for adjusting my meta data for indexing. They said there is a software that does this for you. Does anyone have any experience with this? Does this sound true what they are explaining? What is this software and how much does it cost? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[max.favilli]

Sounds bullshit.

[ZoeRigley]

Hi Nicholas,

I'd avoid any automated programmes like this- did they explain how it works? Does it just pull the first line of your page text or product description or something similar to be your meta description? Lots of software can do this, but it's not necessarily the best way- your meta descriptions should be compelling for users who see them in search, and they don't directly impact your ranking anyway. Your meta titles can also be generated automatically, most CMS systems will do this for you automatically unless you override the description, or you'll be able to change your settings or add a module/plugin to do this (e.g. so that a product title is the meta title, followed by your brand name). What is your website built on? E.g. Wordpress, Magento, PrestaShop?

I wouldn't trust this company though, as you'll be able to make such improvements yourself, and worst case scenario they might hurt your rankings.

Hope this helps! 
Zoe

[nchachula]

I am using Magento. I have done a decent job adding proper descriptions and meta data. I was just outreached by a company called Grouphigh who says I am missing the boat somewhere. The rep mentioned my SERP is growing but has so much more potential. He said he used a tool to track the amount of keywords that I am currently showing up in organic searches and that it was very low in comparison to the amount of pages I have. Does this statement hold water? Is there something that I should be doing differently to increase this?

[ZoeRigley]

Hi Nicholas,

OK, then I wouldn't worry about their comments on your meta data, it's far better to create good descriptions and titles manually than to use automated ones- I'd only ever recommend that as an interim solution, or where you have too much data to ever invest in manual changes.

There's always improvements that can be made to SERPs, but I don't think they have the solution for you- I'd invest in the different areas of SEO, e.g. ensuring your pages are well optimised, checking technical points, and working on usability and great content. You could do this with an agency/SEO consultant, or yourself/a staff member. The Moz beginner guide to SEO is a great place to start!

Hope this helps, 
Zoe

[CleverPhD]

First rule of hiring an SEO firm, don't hire a firm that reaches out to you randomly and tells you that you have something broken and they can fix it.  FYI, I also know a prince in Nigeria who needs access to your bank account and would be happy to pay you for it.

That said, the whole pages on site vs pages ranking in Google is a valid measure.  If most of the pages of your site are not ranked in Google, then that may be an indicator that you have a lot of low quality pages and this could be an issue.  This type of metric is a good one for check in the health of your site.

That said, your have to figure out if this matters to your site or not and it is pretty easy to do. Various ways to look at this.

Log into Search Console and if you have a sitemap submitted on your main dashboard for sitemaps you will see URLs submitted vs URLs indexed. At a basic level, how many pages did you show to Google and then how many pages did Google say, yes, these are good enough to be indexed.

Use ScreamingFrog or the MozCrawl, see how many URLs are found by crawling your website.  How does this total compare to what you show in your sitemap?  Do you have a bunch of pages that are just tag cloud pages or a page that is just a resorted or printer friendly version (aka duplicate) of another page?  You probably need to block access to those (and make sure they are not in your sitemap).

ScreamingFrog has a API to connect to your GA data.  You can then also pull what type of search traffic do these pages get.  This gets back to your ranking question.  If you have a page that Google is ranking for something, it should get some search traffic to it.  Depending on how much traffic you get overall to your site, you may need to look at a 3 to 6 month time period.  You can now say, out of all of the URLs on your site, if there is a group of URLs that is not getting any traffic from Google for the past 6 months, they are probably not ranking for any key words.  Why is that?  Look at those pages.  Are they crappy pages with very little or duplicate content?  Updating a meta tag will not do anything if you have a crappy page to start with.  Maybe you need to noindex them or 404 them and get them off your site.  Maybe you need to add content, write more, include some graphics etc.   Maybe you have duplicate or similar pages you need to combine into one super page and redirect the other page to it.

Good luck!

[nchachula]

I run an e-commerce site which is why I have so many pages. Each product acts as its own page. Each product has a title (product name) and each has its own URL as well as short description, long description and meta description. Maybe I need to go further into the description and add more content and double check that they are in fact being crawled by google as you mention.