After reading this article on the Official Google Webmaster Blog, I was trying to find a way for WordPress to automatically create effective meta descriptions following Google’s directions.
So I wrote this plugin that generates meta descriptions in this structure:
<meta name=”description” content=”Author: (author) | Categories: (categories) | Posted: (postdate) | Tags: (tags) | Comments (number of comments)” />
In the option panel you can choose which properties of the article you would like to include: author, categories, post date, number of comments and tags. You can also choose the devider you wish to use betwen the properties.
Tags is especially one you might want to consider leaving out because they might be already in you meta keywords.
This plugin is still in BETA and I don’t know wether it actually is an improvement on the attractiveness of your snippets. So please let me know what your ideas and experiences are!
Installation: just drop it in your /wp-content/plugins folder and activate through the admin plugin interface. You can configure it through Options > Impr. Meta Descr. Snippets.
I have so far tested this plugin for compatibility with these other plugins:
- Ultimate Tag Warrior – If you are using WP 2.3+ with native tag support my plugin will use those tags, if you have a lower version and UTW installed it will use those.
- All in One SEO Pack – Make sure you switch of the “Autogenerate descriptions” option for this plugin or you will have two meta descriptions in your page, which can’t be good!
- TDO Mini Forms – My plugin will grab the author of the article when it’s been submitted through this plugin.
Ideas for future versions:
- Meta descriptions for pages
- Perhaps meta descriptions for the homepage and archive pages as well
- Better language support
Comments (9)
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[...] 3. Improved Meta Description Snippets – Rating: I haven’t noticed any significant increase in traffic since implementing this. I have to do more research but I do believe meta is very important to any website owner. [...]
March 23, 2008 at 7:56 pm
May 6, 2008 (5:21 pm)
hi there .thanks for plugin:
Does anybody know if tis script is compatible with WordPress 2.5.1 ?
Thanks in advance for any help on this!
best regards
baron
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[...] “snippet” is the text that appears underneath the title on the search engine results page. Some people [...]
July 11, 2008 at 10:18 pm
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[...] Improved Meta Description SnippetsThis generates meta descriptions for your posts automatically, using the format explained on the Official Google Webmaster Central blog in this article. It uses author, post date, categories, number of comments and, when available, tags. Bookmarks: [...]
November 14, 2008 at 9:27 am
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[...] Improved Meta Description Snippets: It automatically creates effective meta descriptions following Google’s directions. [...]
February 5, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Pingback by Amélioration Meta Description « Webmaster Cercle
[...] Page du plugin [...]
April 25, 2009 at 4:40 pm
May 21, 2009 (1:21 pm)
Do you plan on updating this plugin to work with Google’s newly announced semantic rich snippets?
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/05/introducing-rich-snippets.html
It would be great to use this to embed RDFa in WordPress content.
May 25, 2009 (9:19 am)
Hi Joss. Yeah, it would actually be a better purpose than what it does now
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[...] WordPress Plugin: Improved Meta Description Snippets [...]
March 29, 2010 at 4:01 pm