This is the first entry in the WordPress Trap series.
What does that green checkmark actually mean?
Well the bad news is is that checkmark doesn't mean anything when it comes to actually getting found on a search engine.
The reason you installed this wonderful plugin on your WordPress site. Then you fiddled around with the description until you got a green checkmark and you think you're done.
You're not even close to done.
That description may not actually answer any questions that your visitors might ask. It is not relevant to how they search for you. The only thing that is checked is to make sure that it falls within a certain character limit. The dirty little secret is Google doesn't care about a character limit. It only cares if that description and the content on the page can answer the question that the user is asking right now.
What About META Keywords?
Years ago we used to worry about keywords, obsessively. Selecting the correct keywords to position our sites properly.
Don't focus on META Keywords.
In 2009, Google made a decision that changed all of that. They ignore those keywords completely when ranking search results. It only cares about the actual content of the site.
The blog post specifically also states
Even though we sometimes use the description META tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description META tag in our ranking.
So that Description you agonized over, is meaningless to getting found.
More bad news
The search engine itself is going away in the traditional sense, and you're going to have to position your site for artificial intelligence. And if you only have a META Description and some pretty pictures on your site, you are not going to get recommended.
That means you are essentially on an island to yourself and nobody will find you. Many of your potential visitors are going to ChatGPT or another chatbot and asking who they should get to haul their freight, paint their house, and fix their plumbing. And those chatbots don't care if you're on the first page of Google. They only care if you can answer the question the user is asking.
If you can't answer the question, then you are ignored. Not pushed to the second page of Google, flat ignored and not shown to the person searching.
What do I need to do to fix my website so people can actually find me?
You fix your site by adding content, and you keep adding content. That is what you need to focus on, it is just that simple. Your 160 character META Description that got a green check mark is only that 160 characters of content.
You're basically someone the visitor is seeking to give a keynote speech in front of a large crowd, and you say 10 words and hold up pretty pictures.
That is not enough to make a judgment about you, except to establish you have nothing to offer. It is certainly not enough to establish your expertise in anything, except META Descriptions.
Content is what is going to win you search results and AI results in the future.
Nothing else is going to matter, not how many pretty pictures you have, not if it looks pretty on tables vs phones, not your color scheme.
Search engines and AI will not guess.
If you don't say it plainly, you're saying nothing.
If you have nothing to say then you get ignored.
Sources:
