The Social Media Blog - Methodical Madness

A Dear John Letter to Google+

Dear Google+,

Let me start this off by saying that it's not you; it's me.

Really. I think you're great. These last few weeks have been really fun. Your simple elegance is breath-taking and you are so easy to get along with.

I can't deny that I was attracted to you at first. You were so new and shiny. Call it "the grass is always greener" syndrome. Or simply call it "social lust." Sure, you were a bit more modern, a bit younger, a bit flashier and brought some things to the table that I had not seen before. You seemed wild and exotic. But eventually,  as we spent time together, I realized that you didn't really offer me anything new.

And that's the rub.

I don't know that I am ready to break-up with my current social network.  I've been going with that other site for so long now (coming up on 5 years) that I'm just more comfortable with them. We've shared so many memories together. Pictures. Videos. Games. Even a poke or two. Plus, my entire family and all my friends really like my current social network. It'll be hard to get them to switch their minds and embrace what you have to offer.

I know this may come as a shock. But from what I understand, I am not the only one that feels this way. Your appeal has been dwindling by the day. And recently, I've even heard that members of your own family have disparaged you in public (albeit accidentally). How can I love you if even your own parents don't think your worthy of their time?

I know that maybe if I spent more time with you, I would change my mind. But that's just it. I don't have the time for another social network—at least not the time it takes to develop a proper relationship.

Not that you care, but I think my current social network noticed my wandering eye. They've really done their best to improve our relationship (although it still seems very needy at times...wanting to know what I am doing every second). They've even given themselves a makeover to make me more interested. And I have to say, it's working.

Perhaps if we met at a different time in my life things would be different. And maybe they still can be. I'm not completely closing the door to any future with us. So, I'll keep tabs on you just in case.  

I wish you nothing but success.

My warmest regards,

~ Kevin

 

Kevin Duffy is the Creative Director for The Duffy Agency's Boston office.

Is Google+ just the next Google Wave?

As most of you know, the new social networking site from Google, Google +,  went live on a limited basis at the end of last month. Since that time there has been a scramble in social media circles to get invites. But recently, it seems that invite ration has opened up a bit. In fact, according to +Paul Allen, Google+ will be approaching the 18 million mark soon.  

But in my mind, the question remains, do we need another social network and will Google+ succeed in the long run?

Google+ certainly has many unique features. The best of which is the "circles" feature. If you are like me (and if you were you'd be a tall, goofy-looking Irish guy), you might categorize your social networks. For example, Facebook is more for friends and family, LinkedIn is more for business and Twitter is more for, well, everyone. With Google+ you categorize people into circles— you can have a friends circle, family circle, business circle, etc. Google+ allow you control over who see your posts, from everyone to a single person. Now, you no longer have to worry about business contacts seeing posts about a party you went to the evening before. This also alleviates the problem of business contacts trying to friend you on Facebook (if you feel uneasy about that). On the one hand, you don't want to ignore a friend request and possibly offend a business acquaintance. Yet, on the other hand, you don't necessarily want clients to have access to the more personal aspects of your life that you might share with family on Facebook. By the way, I'd expect Facebook to steal this "circles" idea very soon.

There are also other features like Hangouts, Sparks and Huddles. Mashable, as usual, wrote and excellent overview of all the features of Google+.

Whether Google+ will succeed really depends on its user base and how extensively it grows. Very few people have the time to manage another social network. In fact, I'd say most of us have a hard enough time with the Big Three (FB, LinkedIn & Twitter). So Google+ will have to replace something. It does has the horsepower and feature sets to replace all three. But it won't. At least not completely. Inertia is a very strong force. People have already invested their time and energy into the Big Three, so breaking that strangle hold is close to impossible.

And what about that investment in time. You probably already have a slew of pictures and videos on Facebook. You have written and received recommendations on LinkedIn. You've already linked your entire life to Twitter for easy sharing. Are you willing to walk away from that now? I'm sure that LinkedIn and Facebook will not make it easy to transfer data to Google+. In fact, Facebook has already blocked tools that would allow for easy migration to Google+.  Moreover, I know there are people (non-tech friends and family members) that have a hard enough time with Facebook and will never switch. And if they don't switch how can I?

Right now there is a lot of buzz about Google+ (not to be confused with Google Buzz). Google fanboys love it, of course. But there was also a lot of buzz about Google Wave (R.I.P.). There was the same accolades on Web sites. There were the same pleas on social media channels asking for invites leading to the inevitable eBay sales.  Google+ will probably have more staying power. If nothing else, it's a bit more familiar and intuitive than Google Wave ever was. There are also a lot of cool new features. Of course, nothing so proprietary that Facebook or LinkedIn couldn't steal these ideas.

Personally, I like Google+. I also think that it can help tie all the loose ends of social media into one nice, managable package. But it's ultimate success still comes down to your friends and family.

Will they start using Google+? And if they don't, then do you actually have the time, energy or desire to maintain another social media site?

What do you think? What do you love or hate about Google+?

 

Kevin Duffy is the Creative Director for The Duffy Agency's Boston office.

Will RockMelt succeed where others have failed?

A few months back I did a quick review of the RockMelt browser. In that review, I talked about its reported benefits and challenges. I could not review it firsthand because I had yet to receive an invite. Well last month, I finally received my invite (although I tend to think my SPAM filter might have done away with a couple earlier attempts). Coincidentally last week, RockMelt was made available to anyone as a public beta application; invites are no longer necessary. So, I thought now would be a good time for my review.

I've been using RockMelt for the better part of a month now, and I can honestly say—it's not that bad. Not a glowing recommendation, I know, but it could have been worse.

You see, I hopped on the bandwagon when Flock first came out. On paper, Flock was a brilliant idea. It was just that in practice, Flock was a pain in the butt—at least for me. Too many things going on. Too confusing. Plus, it ran slowly on my system. I felt a bit let down. I had wanted to like Flock, but it just could not deliver on its promises.

RockMelt has been different. It has delivered on its promises (even though some people were put off by how those RockMelt promises were delivered). RockMelt is built on Google's Chrome browser, which, overall, is amazingly fast. As those really cool Chrome commercials show, there is a noticeable improvement in the speed of pages loading. However, some pages repeatedly loaded incorrectly (Boston.com, for example), although they did incorrectly load incredibly fast.

The main selling point for RockMelt, however, is not speed, but the integration of social media apps like Twitter and Facebook (FB) as well as your RSS streams. These are the areas I really liked. The left-hand side of the screen is dedicated to Facebook. Being able to see my FB friends online with just a glance—as well as being able to easily IM them—is very convenient. I also like the fact that you can stay within your browser page to chat with someone on FB. This worked well last week when a friend and I were watching a Ustream show, and we were able to comment on the action (I'm talking to you Mr. Tigerblood).

The good news is that you can also easily toggle between offline and online on Facebook in case you want to get some actual work done. Sharing is also incredible easy with the "Share" button located between the URL bar and the quick-search bar. This allows you to quickly share any page you are on to Facebook or Twitter. You can also just drag any URL to the left and share it instantly with any of your online FB friends.

The right side of the browser allows for feeds from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and just about anything else with an RSS feed attached to it. I have a few of my favorite blogs and Web sites entered into this area. For me, the Facebook and Twitter updates are pretty much useless because with all the friends I have (that sounds a lot more snarky than it should), both fill up quickly, and I can't keep up with it. Every time I turn around I have another 99+ updates from my FB friends. I do like the RSS feed updates. This is a bit more manageable. And I find it very useful to keep up with all my favorite sites.

Overall, everything sounds great, right? So why don't I have a more glowing opinion of RockMelt? Because my current browser is just not bad enough. And that's the rub.

If you are like me, you have your current browser set up so you know exactly where everything is. My StumbleUpon and Delicious buttons? Got 'em and can use the in an instant. Favorites? Got those all lined up where I like them and in the folders I want them in. (Btw, you can import current bookmarks and other browser data into RockMelt.)

The bottom line is this: I'm not sure I'm ready for a new browser relationship. And I think that is going to be why RockMelt isn't going to attract a mass audience. And as cool as some RockMelt's features are, inertia in the marketplace is just too strong. RockMelt just doesn't have enough muscle.

It should also be noted that although last fall there was a lot of hype about the product (people like Robert Scoble were declaring RockMelt the next best thing), its release into public beta was a lot more subdued. Not sure what to make of that. About a million people have downloaded it so far, and according to TechCrunch, between 20 to 30 percent of those who have tried it so far are still active users.

I guess only time will tell if RockMelt will be successful or just another Flock in the pan. What do you think? Have you tried it? What features do you like or not like? What is preventing you from switching over from your current browser?

 

Who Will Win the Location-Based Ad Wars?

 

There is a battle going on for your location-based, disposable-income dollars, and the latest salvo has been launched by Google with their Google Boost product. Available as a beta product right now only in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago, Google Boost makes it very easy for local businesses to create search ads from within their Google Places account. In fact, to create an ad all you need is a short description, your URL or Places page, your business category and a monthly budget. From there, the Google system sets everything up for you—including determining the best keywords. 

These ads appear within the sponsored link section of Google.com after a user searches for a business type or service and a location. The ads also appear within the Map section of Google, clearly identified as a sponsored link with a blue location tag on the map—differentiating itself from the normal red location tags. The example Google gave on their blog (see below) clearly illustrates how this would look if you were searching for an Asian restaurant in San Francisco.

 (Click to enlarge)

The location-based wars heated up this summer with the launch of Facebook Places, a service that allows you to check in to venues much the same way as Foursquare or Gowalla.  Your location then appears in your ever-ubiquitous Facebook news feed. (As has been Facebook's model of late, the service immediately sparked concerns over privacy.) However, Facebook has yet to create an advertising model around Facebook Places, but let's face it (no pun intended), that's just a matter of time.  

As usual when two tech giants face off, there is speculation over who will win and who will lose. Obviously, it is too early in this conflagration to determine such a thing with any certainty. However, it would seem that Google's location-based ad model would be a bigger boon to local business. And the difference comes down to how both services are used.

Currently, Facebook is still used as a personal information megaphone, allowing you to share the smallest details of your life with your friends. Because of all the minutia it is able to aggregate on its users, Facebook is very good at serving up extremely-relevant advertisements. But location-based ads on Facebook—like their current regular ads— would be more akin to a billboard or print advertisement. Sure they may influence me if I am in the right state of mind, but just because I check in at a local gift shop, doesn't mean I am interested in the latest dinner specials at the restaurant next door.

Google, on the other hand, is a more active process. You use Google because you need information and are actively pursuing it. Google may not know everything about your life (then again, you might surprised what they do know), but they know that at the instant you use their service, you are looking for something. So using the old-school advertising model from the previous example, it's more akin to seeing an ad for a restaurant in the restaurant section of your yellow pages. An advertisement in that context is more apt to influence you because you are actively looking for a place to eat.  

Until Facebook enters the world of search—and that might be coming—Google seems like the better bet for local businesses to reap the benefits of location-based advertising.  As with anything, time will tell.

What do you think? Is Facebook or Google better positioned to reap the benefits of local-based advertising? Or maybe there is another player like Foursquare or Gowalla that should be considered?

 

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Why it all matters: the importance of knowing your brand online

The Internet isn’t your friend. It’s not your buddy or your pal. The Internet is a machine that lays in wait for that one moment for you to do something wrong, so it can document that mistake for all time. As more sites race to get their users indexed in search engines, your random comments, your friends’ random comments about you and stuff you did years ago can all come back to haunt you.

I did a recent vanity search (searching your name on Google to see what appears) and I was surprised at the variety of sites I found related to my name. I have a unique name, which means that almost all of my search results related to my online activity. Check -in’s with GoWalla, comments on blogs, Wikipedia entries I’ve edited, blog posts, Twitter comments, reviews I’ve written, Facebook comments, friends’ Facebook comments about me, my activity on GoMiso.com and more all appeared in the search. This has changed a lot from a year ago when did a vanity search. The depth and scope of my online activity is more specific and paints a more interesting and accurate picture of my online movement.

With more sites making their data searchable by Google, Bing and Yahoo, what you do and what your brand does is more transparent than ever. What will clients find when they do a search for your company or your employees? If you’re on the hunt for a new job, when potential employers look you up, what will they find? Oftentimes, you can’t remove an offhand comment or embarrassing moment. 

There isn’t much you can do to remove negative search results, but there are several things you can do to make sure they aren’t ranked high.

SEO - Proper SEO on your websites mean that Google will index more pages on your site and they will rank higher in search results and move negative results further down the list

Ask nicely - Ask the blog or your friend to remove the negative comment about you. If you’ve left a comment on a blog post, odds are you can probably delete that yourself.

File a DMCA takedown notice - If a website is infringing on your trademark or copying your content, you can file a Digital Millennium Copyright takedown notice with the online service provider. Online service providers don’t like confrontation and rather than risk a potential lawsuit, they’ll get the offending material taken down.

Pay them off - This is one of the last methods I would attempt. Once people find out you’re paying to have negative material taken off a website, it opens the floodgates for far more slanderous material to appear.

Threaten a lawsuit - Most people don’t want the hassle and expense of going to court battle. Usually the threat of a lawsuit will be enough to get people to take down material. Again, this can backfire on you. Sometimes of the threat of litigation brings out harsher sentiment and can make your defamer even more aggressive. 

Knowing your online reputation or your brand’s online reputation is becoming increasingly important. As more people are active online and every brand is hanging a shingle up on various websites, knowing how the public sees your online activity and what they’ll find when they look you up is more important than ever. Just like a large corporation, your name is your brand and protecting it should be high on your list of things to do.

What are some of the strange things you’ve found when searching for your name or your company?

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When PayPerClick (AdWords) is better than SEO

It’s difficult to justify a long term SEO strategy to someone when their boss is breathing down their neck, demanding to see improved traffic at next week’s meeting. You may recall that we dedicated a previous post to how PPC is, in the long run, a waste of money. While we still hold to that, the truth is the fastest way to get more traffic is to pay for it, so using AdWords as a supplement to your SEO efforts is a good idea in certain situations. Let’s look at how to make a smart campaign using AdWords when the need arises. 

Too often, companies run costly AdWords campaigns with a huge list of keywords that all point to the same landing page. This results in lots of traffic to that one page, but that page may not be relevant to the visitor. The main goal for a successful PPC campaign is to make sure everyone who clicks one of your ads will be satisfied with the results they get, and that result needs to be tailored for each individual keyword. 

For example, if someone Google’s “parts for a ’65 Ford Mustang” and they see your Google Ad, it should link to a page about ’65 Ford Mustangs and not to the homepage of a site about cars. If you can direct a visitor to the exact information they’re looking for, odds are they will stay longer, visit more pages and buy more items.

People searching don’t care about your homepage or promotion for your products. If they don’t get the results they’re looking for, they will leave right away. Which means you are paying for a click with absolutely no value. 

So when exactly should you use PPC? There are a number reasons a short term traffic boost can be worth paying for, but three stand out:

When you are launching a new product
It’s extremely difficult to get a new product on Google’s first page right away if there’s any competition to speak of. Adding a couple of smart ads can help you get the message out quickly.

When you launch a new website
This is the biggest time to use PPC. A new domain and a new website are always hard to compete with for Google spots. You have no links and no strength in your domain. Even with the best on-page SEO, it will take time for Google to categorize your site by keywords and search phrases. Put up some ads and hopefully people will like your website enough to add some links to it, giving you extra traffic you don’t have to pay for and strengthening your site's SEO. 

When you are fighting for extremely competitive keywords
This one is both difficult and expensive. But to get heaps of traffic, you need to hit some of the big keywords. If you get people to your website on a search like “cars” and they like what they see, they will surely come back. And hopefully they will tell their friends about the cool website they found. Getting your ads onto that results page won’t come cheap, but the payoff may be well worth it.

We always recommend SEO over PPC, but having ads on Google can be an effective supplement while you’re trying to climb the organic search results. Keep perspective by bearing in mind that while 90% of Googlers ignore the ads, companies still spend 90% of their search engine marketing budget on them. 

The best solution for you may well be adding the expertise to do both. That way, your expert can decide how much should go to SEO and how much should be spent on PPC. And once the SEO starts to attract huge amounts of traffic, scale back the PayPerClick budget till it’s all organic traffic. After all, you shouldn’t have to pay each person to visit your site. The content should be all the incentive they need.

 

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How Google Instant has fundamentally changed SEO

The game may have changed, but don't go proclaiming the death of SEO just yet

If you live in the US, you probably noticed that Google has been acting funny the past couple days. The search giant has implemented Google Instant into their engine, showing you streaming search results as you type. It’s a major shift in how Google functions and, big surprise, has the SEO world in a tizzy. Below is a video from Google explaining the new service.

 

Google’s algorithm hasn’t changed, but the user experience sure has. Time will tell if users love Google Instant and it leads to a major change in how we search. Understanding how people search is the core of SEO, and that being shaken up has a lot of SEO professionals shaking in their booties. But for SEO thought leaders, changing up how they do things is part of the game. In a way it’s actually what the whole game boils down to, as Google is always updating and users constantly change the way they use the internet. As long as SEO pros keep their heads and meet the challenge head on, they should be ok, even if old tricks became obsolete overnight.  

Here are some thoughts on what the latest change means for the future of SEO.

The top three spots are more important than ever
Being in the top three has always been a key measurement of SEO success since an overwhelming majority of clicks go to those results. With Google Instant, that’s likely to become even more the case. Users can just keep refining their search terms until they see exactly what they want sitting on top, and as such there is less impetus to scroll down through the results hoping what you are looking for will be there.  

Keyword research has to expand
Since searchers will be exposed to many more results, you have many more competitors. Many of those results won’t be of any relevance, but some of them will. It’s now imperative to go play with Google Instant when you’re deciding your keywords to see what other phrases may be thrown in front of your target before they get your site in the results list. Also, Google will be predicting what users are searching for and there’s no way to know for sure what it will be showing them without experimenting with it yourself. And as it’s easier than ever to refine your search query, users are less likely to settle for almost right. This all means that there is greater pressure than ever to find the perfect keywords and that you need to consider adding more of them to your SEO mix than you have in the past.

The riffraff will be weeded out
There are no shortage of SEO “experts” out there who rely on gimmicks to boost search rank. Many of those won’t work anymore, and if they can’t put some brain cells into adapting to the new situation they won’t survive. Google Instant adds yet more factors to SEO and ups the challenge. Expect to see the pioneers and thought leaders not only survive, but do even better. And expect many of the following horde to be picked off. 

Proclamations of SEO doom are much like any other such ballyhooing (think Y2K, 2012). The short-sighted among us panic when things change. The ones with perspective roll with the punches and keep moving forward. SEO might one day die if the importance of search engines as a traffic source tanks, which is certainly not impossible. But as long as ranking number one on Google equals massive traffic, there will be people clever enough to keep SEO relevant. 

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

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Google one step closer to communication dominance

With Google Voice, the web giant crams most of your communication needs into one browser

Given their recent track record with the likes of Google Wave and Google Buzz basically tanking from the word go, it’s difficult not to feel skeptical when Google releases a new “revolutionary” product. But where Buzz and Wave failed, Voice has every chance to succeed. The former services were entirely new communications platforms. Their use wasn’t communicated clearly and as such people didn’t know why they should bother putting the effort into incorporating yet another networking tool into their lives. Voice is back to basics, offering a service everyone understands and needs.

But why should you rethink your calling habits? Web services like Skype and of course mobile phones work pretty well for you already. Well, there are some pretty nifty advantages to making calls from your browser. Advatages like:

• having one universal phone number
• being able to call all of a contact’s phones at once
• listening to voicemail as a caller leaves a message
• transcribed voice messages that appear automatically in your Gmail account
• text messages that go to both phone and email
• send texts for free online via Gmail
• mobile app lets you call and text for free
• low international calling rates.

It’s the coming together of all our major communication needs in one toolbox that makes the launch of Google Voice especially intriguing. If Voice takes off, Google will add calling to the list of successful communication platforms that cover email, video and photo sharing and chat. All of which are browser based, making them easier to access from anywhere than app-based platforms that need to be downloaded and installed. With the advent of HTML5 and the ever increasing array of functionality of web browsers, the future might be a lot less app-centric than we think. 

The major mountain left to climb for the search giant is social networks. Google has tried to break into the space with the aforementioned Wave and Buzz, but have fallen flat on their face so far (GoogleMe may or may not change that). But Voice could at least put them at the top of the heap in non-social network communication.

What do you think: is Google Voice going to change the way you call, or is it another miss from Google’s throw everything against the wall and see what sticks strategy?

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

 

 

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Google Wave may come back with Google Me

It should come as no surprise that Google Wave is being shuttered by the end of the year. It’s another in a long line of failed efforts from the search giant. Sure, Wave was pretty much set up to fail as Google didn’t clearly explain how it should be used and made early adoption difficult as people clamored to get an invite.  Buzz was a victim of Google’s model of throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks. Wave was doomed from the beginning and follows long line of failed projects such as Jaiku, Dodgeball, Google Video and Lively. 

According to Google:“But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.”

From Google’s statements, it appears they never intended to support Wave long term. Instead they wanted to work out the kinks so it can be used in another manner. Wave is revolutionary in that it gives you the ability to share photos, videos and comment on them in real time. Could Wave return as built in feature of the Google OS or their Facebook challenger, Google Me? 

Google’s other big project, the supposed Twitter killer Buzz, launched to great fanfare and criticism earlier this year.  Unlike Wave, where you had to get an invite to use it, by having a Google account, you already had an active account. Most people, including myself, weren’t happy with this new feature openly sharing content without the users permission.  Since it’s launch adoption has been slow and it’s impact isn’t as strong as Twitter, Digg or Reddit. Because Buzz hasn’t seen the hype and promotion that Wave had, it makes you question Google’s commitment to the project and if we’ll the axe fall on it next year.

The question now becomes, what does this mean for Google Me. If they stick true to form, Google Me will launch out of Gmail. This means that everyone that has a Gmail account will see it magically transformed into a Google Me profile. Rumors are flying about what features will be a part of the site. I would expect Wave to be a big part of that along with a retooled version of Dodgeball, Jaiku, and Buzz. 

Whatever comes out, expect it have to full support of Google. They want to cripple Facebook and only a major push can have any hope of putting a dent in Facebook's 500 million users. Working in Google's favor is Facebook fatigue. Users of the world's largest social network are starting to look for new sites to join and Google Me could be in the perfect position to exploit that need. While Google has been tight lipped about the Me project, expect details to start trickling out soon. 

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

Writing meta tags: the great equalizer

You may be out-ranked, but you can still out-traffic the competition

You pour blood sweat and tears into SEO, clawing your way to the top spot on Google, triumphing over adversity like Rocky climbing stair after stair in Philadelphia. And you still don’t get the clicks. 

Like your mother always told you, winning isn’t everything. Being in the top spot in search rankings doesn’t guarantee people will be impressed enough to click your link. It’s likely enough they’ll take a look at the few entries below you and go elsewhere. That’s why your click-through rate (CTR) is the real measure of your SEO success.

Getting that high CTR is all about your meta tag descriptions. These are often neglected since search engines have been ignoring them in their rankings for many, many years. Which doesn’t make much sense as, whether it’s organic search traffic or pay per click, the meta tag is where you pitch your website to surfers, telling them what they’ll find on your page and why it’s worth their time.

 Follow the subtle arrow to find the meta tag

But hey, you’ve got the first spot, so you’ll still get most of the traffic right? Actually, you could be missing out on 80% of it. Traffic can vary between 20%-60% of clicks with a brilliant vs. rubbish meta tag description. If we’re talking about tens of thousands of searches, or more, that’s one heck of a lot of missed visits. 

Let’s look at an example. Here are the top 5 search results for “international ad agency.” Which one would you click on?

I would go for the second or third entries and skip the other ones entirely since their meta tag descriptions are far from convincing. 

Now that you know how important the meta tags are, here are some tips for writing them:

• Keep it within 150 letters as that’s all Google will show
• Run searches for your keywords and take a look at what competing sites have written to get a better idea of how to make your tags stand out
• Be convincing without being misleading - a good CTR doesn’t mean anything if you have a sky high bounce rate 
• Think of them as ads for your website

One last thought to mull over as you ponder how to handle your meta tags – if you don’t write them yourself, you may be in for some character assassination at the hands of Google. Just look what kind of spin the meta tag below put on an innocent writer, who in the context of the article is actually held in high esteem. Not so much on Google.