In SEO we spend so much time improving our rankings, getting links, optimizing content, and watching competitors (all good things), but it is easy to neglect optimizing the actual listing of each page in the search engines. The “Search Engine Viewer” is just that tool. And more than just showing you how it looks, we tell you what needs fixed!
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Obviously what your listing says has a bearing on whether you get selected out of the list of results. Your title alone can make or break the decision. If your title is okay, but your description is irrelevant (or lousy), the potential customer is going to choose another link.
A very common problem with websites is the use of the same meta tag description in every page. Although the search engines don’t always display the meta tag description (they will use excerpts from the content body or from an open directory listing), it is important to make it relevant and unique for that page. The Search Engine Viewer tool compares your meta tag description to your other pages, and alerts you if it is not unique. The title is also checked for uniqueness.
Google only shows a limited number of characters in the title and description, so it’s a good idea to try to keep your title and description within these limits. This way you can control exactly what is being shown, without it being cut off.
We have found this extremely useful for our own sites, discovering several meta tag descriptions that were using the default description from our home page!
We hope you have enjoyed the new SEO tools this week (Dead Link Checker, XML Sitemap Generator, and the Top Subpages Tool). We just finished one more tool and will announce it on Monday, so check back next week for another handy SEO tool!
In the meantime, if you haven’t tried SoloSEO, you’re missing out! SoloSEO is a do-it-yourself SEO solution, providing all the tools and reports you need to do SEO for yourself or your clients.
UPDATE: We are pleased to announce Michael Gray of Wolf-Howl.com has just posted a review of SoloSEO on his site, you can read his full report here. I had the opportunity to meet with Michael briefly at PubCon, and both Aaron and I consider Michael as a foremost authority on the current state of SEO, and visit his blog frequently. We have already discussed the contents of Michael’s review and plan on addressing his suggestions in the near future. Thanks to Michael for his time, insight and willingness in reviewing SoloSEO.
