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For every article I have posted Google has the same “Home description”. I have personally filled out the FV Simpler SEO individual meta description info for each article but it is useless if it never gets seen. I don’t know how to make it visible so that Google can use it instead of the home description over and over again. Do I need to copy and paste the meta description for each post into the excerpt section? I usually leave that blank. Please help as I feel this would really help out with my SEO efforts.
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Hi Aisak,
There is probably something missing in your header template. Please open up /wp-content/themes/yourtheme and have a look in header.php
There should be something like:
// Add the blog description for the home/front page.
$site_description = get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' );
if ( $site_description && ( is_home() || is_front_page() ) )
echo " | $site_description";If there isn’t it, try adding it. You could also try enabling the TwentyTen theme which has proper meta description support built-in, to test.
Making the web work for you, Alec
Hello Aisak,
you should look at 3 random articles you wrote and check the <meta name=”description”> tags in their source code. It should contain the correct meta description as entered with FV Simpler SEO.
If it does not, then it could be a problem with your theme or a conflict with some other plugin.
Thanks,
Martin@Alec I added the code to the header and it wound up just being written out on the top of my pages so I removed it today when I noticed it.
@Martin when I checked the source the meta info is there i.e. the description and keywords. Thanks goodness because I don’t know how to find that info to add it in. Since it is there what could the problem be? Do I need to re-insert the above info back into the header php but in a different place? I am not sure where to put it so it won’t be written across my posts.
Hi Aisak,
Sorry the code didn’t work for you. The issue is not with FV Simpler SEO but with your template.
If you’d like us to troubleshoot your template for you, please make a pro support request: http://foliovision.com/seo-tools/wordpress/pro-install
Thanks!
This happens to me – the meta descriptions are sometimes picked up by Google, but not always. In many posts, what is entered into the meta description field is not returned by Google (though the long title always seems to get picked up). So, the fact that the meta descriptions work only intermittently rather rules out some theme conflict.
HI Sakhaka,
Google sometimes prefers their own snippet to the meta description, especially if the meta description doesn’t contain any of the keywords of the original query and their snippet does.
It’s still good practice to have a sensible meta-description there for the many times Google does display it. The meta description should be short and make people want to click on YOUR link.
Thanks for the info. I notice that with a Google search of the form “site:mysite.com” which essentially contains no query, that the meta description is still not picked up in many instances. Still, the long titles are honoured.
