If descriptions are set individually then Google will use them see Google Support

“We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL’s content”

A further explanation of whats and hows: Google Selectively Ignoring Meta Description Tags?

Audit your website. Are you using the six tools of influence?

Many of us hold an aversion to long sales letter landing pages. So why do online marketers keep using them?

Lets dispel two myths with one stone:

• Myth 1: Surely these long letters, in “folksy” style  don’t work
• Myth 2: Even if they do, they are only good for down market products.

Well, this sales letter (non-web) written by the late copywriter Martin Conroy was used continuously for 28 years…making it the longest running control in history. And the product – Wall Street Journal!

The answer to the original question is that, in many markets, sales letter that engage customers DO WORK, and marketers keep using them because the Market Never Lies.

Here are some of the factors that influence whether a short or long page is appropriate.

Long Copy vs. Short Copy Performance—Influence Factors

This doesn’t mean you should rely on these “influence” factors to determine if you should use a long sales copy on your landing pages – but you should consider A/B testing longer copy, against shorter.

Lesson: Let the market decide.

The process for SEO depends on a range of factors.

But this image shows the basics:

• 1. Do keyword research before you start because it will impact on your site structure and copy.
• 2. Optimise the content you do have for the keywords you have chosen.
• 3. Add more content, build links, start and join online conversations…..

Information Architecture design is about making the about making the complex appear simple.

This from Steve Jobs in 1984:

When you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple, you don’t really understand the complexity of the problem. Then you get into the problem, and you see that it’s really complicated, and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That’s sort of the middle, and that’s where most people stop….

But the really great person will keep on going and find the key, the underlying principle of the problem—and come up with an elegant, really beautiful solution that works.

More about Experience Design here

Its analagous to the steps of competence in NLP:
Stage 1 – Unconscious Incompetence because this is where we don’t know what we don’t know.
Stage 2 – Conscious Incompetence where we do know what we don’t know.
Stage 3 – Conscious Competence because this is where we know what we know.
Stage 4 – Unconscious Competence which is where we don’t know what we know – “second nature” from being a conscious to an unconscious functioning
http://www.microdot.net/nlp/learning-strategy/stages-of-competence.htm

You find the elegant solution, because at a conscious level you keeping PUSHING to get it, but also because your competencies in the complex are so ingrained, that you are attuned to recognizing the the beauty in the simple solution, at a an unconscious level.

Think Blink!

Oh and another thought on the Simple > Complex > Simple train. Joe Sugerman on copywriting:

A rule of thumb … is to explain a complicated product in a simple way and explain a simple product in a complex way

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook

You can measure engagement. More importantly, engagement can be optimized. The case study shows how we used multivariate and targeted content delivery to optimize engagement. The final outcome of the page optimization was to drive an incremental revenue gain of 55% to a key user segement.

The Audible.com Case Study

A lot the material about social networks is familiar from Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point”. While Malcolm looks at the sociological aspects, I didn’t fully realise the mathematical systems underlying social networks ie. Scale-free networks Concepts like Dunbar’s number (the number of people we can maintain a first name relationship with) are also grouped under the Social Network theories.

What IS interesting is that this ties together not only viral marketing and the concepts in the “Tipping Point”, but also the web, and of particular interest search engine optimisation, and link-building or social media optimisation. There has been a lot of talk about semantic hubs on the web, and network theory helps to make this all clearer. It also ties in with semantic web structuring or “silos”.

Semantic relationships are mapped in the WordNet database, which is presented visually in the Visual Thesarus and this experiment at Sydney University. While we are exploring Semantics in search engines, here is a good summary of how Google is currently using Semantic suggestion

Now that the new QS has been released, there are no longer min bids.

Here’s a sweet and simple lesson on getting a perfect QS

AdWords – First Page for a Penny

From Rand at SEOMOZ. I agree – keep it natural…

We’ve talked about how search engines index, examine and measure text – I can assure you that the metric of density is absolutely, 100% unused by any of the major search engines.

And this from way back in 2005

The notion of keyword density values predates all commercial search engines and the Internet and can hardly be considered an IR concept. What is worse, KD plays no role on how commercial search engines process text, index documents or assign weights to terms. Why then many optimizers still believe in KD values? The answer is simple: misinformation.

http://www.miislita.com/fractals/keyword-density-optimization.html