How does "good content" improve SEO?

[Hooker]

I launched my latest blog on December 1st and have been trying to update with an average of 1-2 new articles a day. I've got 68 articles posted at this point.

I keep hearing that original, quality content is great for SEO and that Google "loves it."

My question is: How does this work exactly? And is it enough to push my site over the top at some point?

I am beginning to understand keywords and page optimization, but was wondering how large an impact can be made from writing so darn much

[rob1123]

Quality content is good for link baiting, unfortunately unless there is little to no competition quality content alone won't lead to a good ranking in this serps

[Buyseech]

If your content is good people will read it. If it aint you will get "avg time on site of 0:05 min and a high bounce rate, because everyone will leave and not click through your site, let alone come back.

Quality content will be shared, tweeted, liked...

You are overposting...think quality over quantity. 1 quality post a week is enough, unless you are some sort of celebrity newsguy, then you have new stuff to post about all the time

Hope this helped.

Sincerely, Buyseech

[uniquecontentclub]

Just stick with what you are doing. Of course, make sure you are building links as well.

[drseo]

Originally Posted by Hooker

I launched my latest blog on December 1st and have been trying to update with an average of 1-2 new articles a day. I've got 68 articles posted at this point.

I keep hearing that original, quality content is great for SEO and that Google "loves it."

My question is: How does this work exactly? And is it enough to push my site over the top at some point?

I am beginning to understand keywords and page optimization, but was wondering how large an impact can be made from writing so darn much

Let me quote a little part of my new book, "SEO in 7 days" to answer you:

-----
Content is king! As a blogger, you should only publish valuable content for your visitors. There are many reasons to produce quality content in your website to get ranked better in search engines. You can find most important of them below:

1.Persuading Visitors to Spend More Time in Your Website: If a page does not provide useful fresh content, the visitor leaves the page in less than 10 seconds in about 97/100 cases.

2.Making Permanent Visitors: If they find your content useful and fresh, they will bookmark your page and return visiting your website again!

3.Improving Social Shares (Re-Twits and Facebook Shares …): As explained in last lesson, Social Shares are categorized in Off-Page SEO Ranking Factors and affect your SE Rankings (about 7 percent).

4.Making Your Authority: A valueless content may take down your website's Page Rank. If people find your website useless, they will block your website results from their search results. Getting blocked by Google registered users harms your SE Rankings during the time.
-----
As I informed you, It is just a little part of Content's chapter of my book (So it is defective here).

hope it helps you.

[drseo]

Originally Posted by Buyseech

If your content is good people will read it. If it aint you will get "avg time on site of 0:05 min and a high bounce rate, because everyone will leave and not click through your site, let alone come back.

Quality content will be shared, tweeted, liked...

You are overposting...think quality over quantity. 1 quality post a week is enough, unless you are some sort of celebrity newsguy, then you have new stuff to post about all the time

Hope this helped.

Sincerely, Buyseech

Excuse me, I agree Quality is over Quantity but I have to inform you that it is better to post twice a day. The minimum is once a week.

[Hooker]

I appreciate all the responses guys. It's hard to tell if I am doing the right things.

According to Google Analytics, the average time a person spends on my site is 3:30 with an average of 2.3 pages per visitor. My bounce rate is over 60% though which I know is way too high.

Also, 32% of my visitors are return visitors.

Is there anything glaring here that I need to tweak?

[drseo]

Originally Posted by Hooker

I appreciate all the responses guys. It's hard to tell if I am doing the right things.

According to Google Analytics, the average time a person spends on my site is 3:30 with an average of 2.3 pages per visitor. My bounce rate is over 60% though which I know is way too high.

Also, 32% of my visitors are return visitors.

Is there anything glaring here that I need to tweak?

Can I have your website link? I wanna analyze it.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by drseo

3.Improving Social Shares (Re-Twits and Facebook Shares …): As explained in last lesson, Social Shares are categorized in Off-Page SEO Ranking Factors and affect your PR (about 7 percent).

4.Making Your Authority: An invaluable content may take down your website for ever. If people find your website invaluable, they will block your website results from their search results. Getting blocked by Google registered users harms your PR during the time.
-----

Twitter can be full of twits...

Ummmm...invaluable actually means very valuable...and very valuable
content will take a site down for ever? I want people to think
of my website and content as invaluable.

Man I don't know about that book. Nofollow links have zip to do with PR.
People blocking your website also have nothing to do with PR, nor
organic search results. I think you need to actually research what
affects PR.

I'd do a rewrite of that book.

Paul

[Hooker]

Originally Posted by drseo

Can I have your website link? I wanna analyze it.

I would apreciate any feedback you can give. Link is in my signature.

[drseo]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Twitter can be full of twits...

Ummmm...invaluable actually means very valuable...and very valuable
content will take a site down for ever? I want people to think
of my website and content as invaluable.

Man I don't know about that book. Nofollow links have zip to do with PR.
People blocking your website also have nothing to do with PR, nor
organic search results. I think you need to actually research what
affects PR.

I'd do a rewrite of that book.

Paul

I have to inform you invaluable also means priceless, yep.
Getting blocked by people is a negative PR factor. Google has tens of PR Factors.
I have studied four years.
Thank you Paul, Any way!

[drseo]

Originally Posted by Hooker

I would apreciate any feedback you can give. Link is in my signature.

I am analyzing it. It seems to be good. I will share my results when it finished.

[BarryOnline]

Originally Posted by drseo

Getting blocked by people is a negative PR factor. Google has tens of PR Factors.
I have studied four years.

Site blocking has only been available for less than one year, right?

How have you had time to test that this causes PR drop?

[Buyseech]

Originally Posted by drseo

Excuse me, I agree Quality is over Quantity but I have to inform you that it is better to post twice a day. The minimum is once a week.

I follow blogs that are in the TOP 100 blogs...anywhere which post once a month on average.

I cannot see how one person can get 2 posts a day of content (unless its a 50-100 word "post") on something that they know and that will add value.

If you outsource writing and just post and post, that aint blogging, thats just a directory in my oppinion

[drseo]

Your meta description is more than 150 characters. Currently, Google only displays up to 160 characters, Yahoo! displays up to 165 characters, and Bing displays up to 150 characters. Too few characters indicates that your description is probably not "descript" enough. In the age of Twitter, it shouldn't be too difficult to pare or beef up your description with character efficiency.
Effects on traffic:The meta description tag is an element search engines use to help determine what the page is about. The tag also appears as your site description in search results, so writing your tag to appeal to human eyes can lead to increased clicks on your listing. You will notice that the search engine bolds the keywords you originally searched for in the description tag. If you do not have a description tag, Google will write one for you, and you really don't want that.

You use .swf files in your website. Some websites I find use Flash in a way that hinders the search engines, which can make them difficult to rank. Make sure you use alternate HTML content, and avoid full Flash intros, as I've seen those lead to high bounce rates on your traffic.

Your domain is young. A young domain will likely not rank well immediately depending on competitiveness, unless there is a major social or viral event to drive a massive amount of traffic to the site in a short period of time. Domain age is used in the "trust and authority" calculation the search engine does. Also, purchase your domain out to 5 or 10 years instead of just 1 or 2 years at a time. That makes the search engine comfortable that you plan on being around a while.

You have only 3 Sites Linking In. It is not enough.

Which keyword your website is standing for??? Do a keyword research.

[drseo]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Twitter can be full of twits...

Ummmm...invaluable actually means very valuable...and very valuable
content will take a site down for ever? I want people to think
of my website and content as invaluable.

Man I don't know about that book. Nofollow links have zip to do with PR.
People blocking your website also have nothing to do with PR, nor
organic search results. I think you need to actually research what
affects PR.

I'd do a rewrite of that book.

Paul

Originally Posted by BarryOnline

Site blocking has only been available for less than one year, right?

How have you had time to test that this causes PR drop?

Originally Posted by drseo

I have to inform you invaluable also means priceless, yep.
Getting blocked by people is a negative PR factor. Google has tens of PR Factors.
I have studied four years.
Thank you Paul, Any way!

A Good reference. Study.
Blocking & Search Engine Results

[cjbmeb14]

Quality and regular content added to your site can only improve your search engine rankings. Remember though, post articles on a regular basis and improve your link power.

[drseo]

Originally Posted by Buyseech

I follow blogs that are in the TOP 100 blogs...anywhere which post once a month on average.

I cannot see how one person can get 2 posts a day of content (unless its a 50-100 word "post") on something that they know and that will add value.

If you outsource writing and just post and post, that aint blogging, thats just a directory in my oppinion

Is it true about a wiki website? Or websites which have many writers?
example: Wikihow.com, It publishes more than 15 articles a day.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by drseo

I have to inform you invaluable also means priceless, yep.
Getting blocked by people is a negative PR factor. Google has tens of PR Factors.
I have studied four years.
Thank you Paul, Any way!

Man is that something. Priceless in relation to invaluable,
means it is priceless. That is, something that is worth
SO MUCH or you just can't put a price on it. Meaning
it is VERY VALUABLE. You seriously need to define words.
Especially invaluable.

And about that PR thing? Backlinks. Backlinks. Backlinks.

Like I said, you need to rethink your book. Personal searches
and tweaks have NOTHING to do with a site's PR. If it
did, then no porn sites would have PR, due to millions
blocking them. But porn sites can be authoritative and
have very high PR. The whole country of China blocks
porn, as well as dozens of other countries. Has
nothing to do with PR of a site.

Makes me wonder...

Paul

[webpageworker]

Gud content improve SEO because the becklink from gud content become stable but the backlink with copied content can be temporary..

[Hooker]

Originally Posted by Buyseech

I follow blogs that are in the TOP 100 blogs...anywhere which post once a month on average.

I cannot see how one person can get 2 posts a day of content (unless its a 50-100 word "post") on something that they know and that will add value.

If you outsource writing and just post and post, that aint blogging, thats just a directory in my oppinion

Well, the "value" I am giving is entertaining and thought-provoking articles and there is plenty to write about in the categories I have created. My blogs are typically 300-500 words because of this. I realize if I were writing about health or Internet Marketing they would have to be longer to be valuable, but in this case I am simply attempting to make someone chuckle or think about a topic differently. Because it is mostly opinion, there is little research involved.

There may have been other more profitable areas to enter into, but this type of writing is fun for me and I am able to do it every day....which is why I chose it

[drseo]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Man is that something. Priceless in relation to invaluable,
means it is priceless. That is, something that is worth
SO MUCH or you just can't put a price on it. Meaning
it is VERY VALUABLE. You seriously need to define words.
Especially invaluable.

Paul

You are my friend, As I informed you, It's not yet published and It's defective. I changed it to valueless. It was just a mistake. I will take your help for editing my new book. Thank you Paul.

One PR Factor affects more, another affects less. Porn websites have many backlinks. Are you sure people block pornography websites?
pornhub.com - Sites Linking in - from Alexa ===> 13,418 Sites linking in.
sex.com - Sites Linking in - from Alexa ===> 1,583 Sites linking in.

[mosthost]

Originally Posted by Hooker

I appreciate all the responses guys. It's hard to tell if I am doing the right things.

According to Google Analytics, the average time a person spends on my site is 3:30 with an average of 2.3 pages per visitor. My bounce rate is over 60% though which I know is way too high.

Also, 32% of my visitors are return visitors.

Is there anything glaring here that I need to tweak?

Those numbers are excellent, especially for a new site. The bounce rate is not too high, especially if you have 'social traffic.'

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by drseo

One PR Factor affects more, another affects less. Porn websites have many backlinks. Are you sure people block pornography websites?
pornhub.com - Sites Linking in - from Alexa ===> 13,418 Sites linking in.
sex.com - Sites Linking in - from Alexa ===> 1,583 Sites linking in.

I'd wager that more people block porn sites than any other. I have yet
to meet anyone who says, gee, I blocked joeblow.com because
it's a dumb site.

In fact, the default setting on image and other searches is "Safe Search."

Paul

[yukon]

Originally Posted by drseo

Your meta description is more than 150 characters. Currently, Google only displays up to 160 characters, Yahoo! displays up to 165 characters, and Bing displays up to 150 characters. Too few characters indicates that your description is probably not "descript" enough. In the age of Twitter, it shouldn't be too difficult to pare or beef up your description with character efficiency.
Effects on traffic:The meta description tag is an element search engines use to help determine what the page is about. The tag also appears as your site description in search results, so writing your tag to appeal to human eyes can lead to increased clicks on your listing. You will notice that the search engine bolds the keywords you originally searched for in the description tag. If you do not have a description tag, Google will write one for you, and you really don't want that.

Meta-Description tags are pretty much useless when it comes to SEO.

Wikipedia has thousands & thousands of ranked pages in the SERPs, they don't use a Meta-Description tag on any pages I've seen. I won't go into full details why I think Wikipedia leaves out the Meta-Description tag on purpose, don't need to see it in some other guys ebook. I will say your seriously lowering the chance of better SERP descriptions by having the Meta-Description tag on your pages.

[Buyseech]

Hooker: Now thats another ball game right there Writing for laughs and "whatever comes to mind" stuff is doable ofcourse. Wish you all the best in your endevour.

Sincerely, Buyseech

[Hooker]

Originally Posted by drseo

You have only 3 Sites Linking In. It is not enough.

Well, I am doing what I have been told to do:

1. Blog commenting
2. I post an article to about 10 different article sites about 1 time per week.
3. I bookmark on social sites where my topic fits.
4. I have one Blog Carnival that posts my articles a lot.
5. I do see a few people sharing here and there.

What else can I do?

I have tried looking into guest blogging, but finding sites I know would be of benefit to write for hasn't been easy.

[SEOChemist]

I agree with the go for Quality over Quantity matra, trust me it might seem futile at first, but it does work.

[millamuscio]

Content is King! Be sure to post quality and unique contents to your site and do proper optimization.

[John Hocking]

Google loves content that is well organized and themed. The more you can group your content into common themes the best seo boost you can achieve.

Getting links from other sites with the same theme will also boost the seo of the content.

[drseo]

Originally Posted by Hooker

Well, I am doing what I have been told to do:

1. Blog commenting
2. I post an article to about 10 different article sites about 1 time per week.
3. I bookmark on social sites where my topic fits.
4. I have one Blog Carnival that posts my articles a lot.
5. I do see a few people sharing here and there.

What else can I do?

I have tried looking into guest blogging, but finding sites I know would be of benefit to write for hasn't been easy.

Use Alexa the Web Information Company to findout how other successful competitor websites make links to their websites.

Dr.SEO

[drseo]

Originally Posted by yukon

Meta-Description tags are pretty much useless when it comes to SEO.

Wikipedia has thousands & thousands of ranked pages in the SERPs, they don't use a Meta-Description tag on any pages I've seen. I won't go into full details why I think Wikipedia leaves out the Meta-Description tag on purpose, don't need to see it in some other guys ebook. I will say your seriously lowering the chance of better SERP descriptions by having the Meta-Description tag on your pages.

view-source:http://www.wikipedia.org/

Can't you find this line in source:
<meta name="description" content="Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." />

Best, Dr.SEO

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by drseo

Let me quote a little part of my new book, "SEO in 7 days" to answer you:

-----
Content is king! As a blogger, you should only publish valuable content for your visitors. There are many reasons to produce quality content in your website to get ranked better. You can find most important of them below:

1.Persuading Visitors to Spend More Time in Your Website: If a page does not provide useful fresh content, the visitor leaves the page in less than 10 seconds in about 97/100 cases.

2.Making Permanent Visitors: If they find your content useful and fresh, they will bookmark your page and return visiting your website again!

3.Improving Social Shares (Re-Twits and Facebook Shares …): As explained in last lesson, Social Shares are categorized in Off-Page SEO Ranking Factors and affect your PR (about 7 percent).

4.Making Your Authority: A valueless content may take down your website's Page Rank. If people find your website useless, they will block your website results from their search results. Getting blocked by Google registered users harms your PR during the time.
-----
As I informed you, It is just a little part of Content's chapter of my book (So it is defective here).

hope it helps you.

This might end up being the most useless SEO book ever written, which is saying something if you have a look through the WSO section.

There is so much misinformation in every excerpt you keep posting.

Content has NOTHING to do with PageRank, and neither do social shares. Nothing. Where do you come up with this BS?

[drseo]

Originally Posted by yukon

Meta-Description tags are pretty much useless when it comes to SEO.

Wikipedia has thousands & thousands of ranked pages in the SERPs, they don't use a Meta-Description tag on any pages I've seen. I won't go into full details why I think Wikipedia leaves out the Meta-Description tag on purpose, don't need to see it in some other guys ebook. I will say your seriously lowering the chance of better SERP descriptions by having the Meta-Description tag on your pages.

Originally Posted by drseo

view-source:http://www.wikipedia.org/

Can't you find this line in source:
<meta name="description" content="Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." />

Best, Dr.SEO

Another part of my ebook:

Some factors influence more than others, which I've weighted 1 (weakest) to 3 (strongest). No single factor guarantees top SE Rankings. Several favorable factors increase odds of success.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by drseo

view-source:http://www.wikipedia.org/

Can't you find this line in source:
<meta name="description" content="Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." />

Best, Dr.SEO

Lol, what keyword does that index page rank for (wikipedia)?

Show me a page that ranks for a real keyword. Maybe they have a page, but I've never found one that included the meta-description tag. Then again I'm not going to check thousands of wiki pages.

Only pages I care about are pages that rank for real keywords, Wikipedia Index page, login page, etc... don't count.

[drseo]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

This might end up being the most useless SEO book ever written, which is saying something if you have a look through the WSO section.

There is so much misinformation in every excerpt you keep posting.

Content has NOTHING to do with PageRank. Nothing.

Pay attention before posting. I never told it affects directly, keep reading the reasons in my post. If a content is useless, does someone share it (Or re-twit)? Does someone engage with valueless content? It harms SE Rankings.

[Matt Baker]

I have heard from Matt Cutts that good content will be prioritize by Google.

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by drseo

Pay attention before posting. I never told it affects directly, keep reading the reasons in my post. If a content is useless, does someone share it (Or re-twit)? Does someone engage with valueless content? It harms SE Rankings.

YOU pay attention. Search engine rankings are not the same thing as Page Rank. You said that

Social Shares are categorized in Off-Page SEO Ranking Factors and affect your PR (about 7 percent).

4.Making Your Authority: A valueless content may take down your website's Page Rank.

You are writing an SEO book and you do not even know the difference between PR and search rankings. Christ!

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by drseo
view-source:Wikipedia

Can't you find this line in source:
<meta name="description" content="Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." />

Best, Dr.SEO

You should really try to pay attention to what Yukon was explaining to you. None of Wikipedia's internal pages have a meta description.

Try this one.

Beer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[drseo]

Originally Posted by yukon

Lol, what keyword does that index page rank for (wikipedia)?

Show me a page that ranks for a real keyword. Maybe they have a page, but I've never found one that included the meta-description tag. Then again I'm not going to check thousands of wiki pages.

Only pages I care about are pages that rank for real keywords, Wikipedia Index page, login page, etc... don't count.

[drseo]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

YOU pay attention. Search engine rankings are not the same thing as Page Rank. You said that



You are writing an SEO book and you do not even know the difference between PR and search rankings. Christ!

PR is defined by Google. Is SEO all about Google? Engagement is a Search Engine Ranking Factor for most search engines.

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by drseo

PR is defined by Google. Is SEO all about Google? Engagement is a Search Engine Ranking Factor for most search engines.

I'm saying engagement has nothing to do with PR. I'm not saying anything about it impacting rankings.

You are the one saying nonsense like content, social factors, and engagement impact the Page Rank of a webpage. Page Rank is a measurement of the quality of incoming links. That is all. Nothing to do with content, social likes, bounce rate, or anything else. You can have a lousy site with just one sentence of content and still have a high PR.

By the way, is this that "Smart SEO" book someone sent me a copy of? It sure sounds like it.

[drseo]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

I'm saying engagement has nothing to do with PR. I'm not saying anything about it impacting rankings.

You are the one saying nonsense like content, social factors, and engagement impact the Page Rank of a webpage. Page Rank is a measurement of the quality of incoming links. That is all. Nothing to do with content, social likes, bounce rate, or anything else. You can have a lousy site with just one sentence of content and still have a high PR.

By the way, is this that "Smart SEO" book someone sent me a copy of? It sure sounds like it.

Again, I never told quality content affects directly.
Then if a QUALITY CONTENT get shared by visitors, It does not affect PR when it makes links?

Do not forget this thread is just for helping "Hooker". Try to help him/her. I used a part of my book just for helping him/her. I never asked someone (you) "How is my book". You are kidding me without any logical reason. You waste my time.

Sorry friends
Dr.SEO

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by drseo

Again, I never told quality content affects directly.
Then if a QUALITY CONTENT get shared by visitors, It does not affect PR when it makes links?

You are really grasping at straws now.

You could have fantastic content and people may or may not be inclined to share it. It doesn't increase your PR if they do not. And even if they do share it, a Google +1 is not a backlink.

Again, you can have absolutely horrible content and still have a high PR. You can be a porn site and have great PR. You can run the most hateful, racist website ever created, and still have a high PR. You can have a page with nothing but a picture and have a high PR.

So why don't you just say the truth in your book? The only thing that affects PR is backlinks, however you choose to attract them.

[drseo]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

You are really grasping at straws now.

You could have fantastic content and people may or may not be inclined to share it. It doesn't increase your PR if they do not. And even if they do share it, a Google +1 is not a backlink.

Again, you can have absolutely horrible content and still have a high PR. You can be a porn site and have great PR. You can run the most hateful, racist website ever created, and still have a high PR. You can have a page with nothing but a picture and have a high PR.

So why don't you just say the truth in your book? The only thing that affects PR is backlinks, however you choose to attract them.

Right man. I'm saying you can make backlinks with social shares not increasing PR directly. It is not all included in my ebook. I just wrote from my mind and it is very short here. You are right. I say social shares increase PR just by making links to your website but you can have Good PR without social shares. It just helps by making links but does not decreases PR.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by drseo

Show me a meta-description tag on an internal wiki page that has a keyword that anyone in IM cares about.

Even If your keyword was free encyclopedia, how in the world would you monetize that keyword? If it's Adsense I'm thinking you would be lucky to get a nickel per click, better be driving some massive traffic to realize any ROI.

Try this page Billiard table - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That wiki page above ranks #5 for the keyword billiard table, that's a keyword an IMer (everyone on this forum) would care about.

Again, my point is Wikipedia leaves out the meta-description tag on internal pages for a reason. A meta-description tags only purpose is for human eyes. Still If you know what your doing you can optimize that SERP description for higher CTR without a meta-description tag on the page.

Dig a little deeper for a sub-niche of the main keyword above (billiard table), keep in mind this is a real money keyword. Do a search for english billiard table.

That screenshot below is a triple SERP listing for a money keyword & zero meta-description tags.

Google keyword tool shows no numbers in their data for this keyword, but common sense says that two pages of PPC Ads in the SERPs right sidebar is most likely a buyers keyword, otherwise that SERPs right sidebar would be empty (no PPC Ads). IMers don't continue paying for PPC keywords If they don't perform.

[drseo]

Originally Posted by yukon

Show me a meta-description tag on an internal wiki page that has a keyword that anyone in IM cares about.

Even If your keyword was free encyclopedia, how in the world would you monetize that keyword? If it's Adsense I'm thinking you would be lucky to get a nickel per click, better be driving some massive traffic to realize any ROI.

That wiki page above ranks #5 for the keyword billiard table, that's a keyword an IMer (everyone on this forum) would care about.

Again, my point is Wikipedia leaves out the meta-description tag on internal pages for a reason. A meta-description tags only purpose is for human eyes. Still If you know what your doing you can optimize that SERP description for higher CTR without a meta-description tag on the page.

Dig a little deeper for a sub-niche of the main keyword above (billiard table), keep in mind this is a real money keyword. Do a search for english billiard table.

That screenshot below is a triple SERP listing for a money keyword & zero meta-description tags.

Google keyword tool shows no numbers in their data for this keyword, but common sense says that two pages of PPC Ads in the SERPs right sidebar is most likely a buyers keyword, otherwise that SERPs right sidebar would be empty (no PPC Ads). IMers don't continue paying for PPC keywords If they don't perform.

I agree but the keywords and phrases you use in your Meta description tag may not affect your page's ranking in the search engines, but this tag can still come in handy in your overall SEO and social media marketing campaigns.
There are 3 important ways that Meta descriptions are being used today that make them an important part of your SEO and overall online marketing strategy:
They can be used as the description (or part of the description) of your page if it shows up in the search results.
They are often used as part of the descriptive information for your pages when Google shows "extended sitelinks" for your site.
They are often used as the default description in social media marketing links such as Facebook and Google+.
Let's look at each of these in more detail.

1. Meta Descriptions in the Search Results

People often think that whatever they put in their Meta description tag will be the default description that the search engines use under the clickable link to their site in the search results. While this is sometimes true, it's not always the case.

Currently, if you're searching for a site by its URL (for example SEO Consulting: High Rankings Expert Search Engine Optimization: Search Marketing Agency Boston, MA) Google tends to use the first 20 to 25 words of your Meta description as the default description in the search engine result pages (SERP). However, if you have a listing at DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project (ODP) and are not using the "noodp" tag, they may default to that description instead. (Do a search at Google for www.amazon.com to see an example.)

Bing and Yahoo!, on the other hand, don't always default to the Meta description tag for URL searches. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't.

Of course, real people aren't typically searching for a site by URL, so what the search engines show for those types of search queries is not as important as a true keyword search. So don't get hung up on what you see when you search for your site by its URL or if you're doing a "site:command" search to see how they're indexing your pages.

Instead, go to your favorite web analytics program and find the keyword phrases that are currently bringing you the most traffic. Then see what your description looks like at Google when you type in those keywords.

And surprise! What you'll find is that your search results description will be different for every search query! You may see any combination of the following used:
Your entire Meta description tag text as the complete description (typically if it's highly relevant and contains no more than 25 words).
A full sentence pulled from your Meta description tag, but not the entire Meta description (if it contains more than one sentence).
Text from one part of your Meta description mashed together with text from another part of it (if it's more than 25 words long).
Some text from your Meta description mashed together with some text from the page.
Some text from your page mashed together from some other text from your page (nothing from the Meta description).
Some of the circumstances that cause Google to not use text from your Meta description may include:
The information in the Meta description tag was not specific to the page it was on.
The search query used some words that were not in the Meta description, but those words (or some of them) were used in the page content. This includes words that Google considers somewhat synonymous, such as "copy" and "copywriting" or "SEO" and "search engine optimization."
But even the above are not hard and fast rules. Google doesn't always use all or part of the Meta description even when the exact search phrase was contained within it – especially if the search query is also contained within the content of the page. Suffice it to say that there are no hard and fast rules for when Google will show it and when they won't.

My recommendation is to always use description tags on any pages where you get search engine visitors (or hope to get them). Make them very specific to the page they're on by describing what someone will find when they click through to the page from the search results, while also using variations of your targeted keywords.

Because Google will show only show around 20 to 25 words as your description, many SEOs recommend that you limit this tag to a certain number of characters. In reality, however, you're not limited to any specific number. Your Meta description tag can be as long as you want it to be because Google will pull out the relevant parts of it and make their own snippet anyway.

For instance, if you're optimizing a page for 3 different keyword phrases, you could write a 3-sentence Meta description tag, with each sentence focusing on a different phrase. You could probably even insert more than 3 phrases in those sentences if you're a good wordsmith. The idea, however, is not to stuff this tag full of keywords, but to write each sentence to be a compelling marketing statement – a statement that naturally uses the keywords people might be typing into Google to find your site.

2. Meta Descriptions and Extended Sitelinks

These days, Google often uses the first few words from your Meta description tag when they create the "extended sitelinks" for your website. But this too is not set in stone and is highly keyword dependent. You'll see different sitelinks and different descriptions showing up depending on the words a searcher used at Google.

3. Meta Descriptions and Social Media Marketing

Ever wonder why some Facebook links have great descriptions and others don't seem to make any sense? It's because some site owners have taken the time to write a summary of the article and place it into their Meta description tag, and some have not. If your article has a Meta description, Facebook and Google+ will default to that when you share a link on your profile or "Page." If there's no Meta description, you'll usually see the first sentence or so from the page being used as the default.

While anyone can edit the description that Facebook defaults to, most people don't. And at this time on Google+ you can't even edit the default description. You can either leave it as is or delete it all together. Let's face it -- most of the time the first sentence of an article is not a good description of the rest of it. It's not supposed to be, because that's not what a first sentence is for!

Therefore, I strongly advise you to always write a compelling 1- or 2-sentence description for all of your articles and blog content that may be shared via social media, and place it into your Meta description tag. This will give you a big jump on your competitors who haven't figured this out yet, making your social media content much more clickable because people will know what the article is actually about before they click on it.

Overall, the Meta description tag gives you a little bit more control over what people might see before they click over to your site. The more compelling it is, the more clickthroughs you should see. If your Meta description tags can help with that, then it's certainly worth the few minutes of time it takes to create interesting, keyword-rich tags that sum up what users will find when they arrive.

[Hooker]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

I'm saying engagement has nothing to do with PR. I'm not saying anything about it impacting rankings.

You are the one saying nonsense like content, social factors, and engagement impact the Page Rank of a webpage. Page Rank is a measurement of the quality of incoming links. That is all. Nothing to do with content, social likes, bounce rate, or anything else. You can have a lousy site with just one sentence of content and still have a high PR.

So let me see if I am understanding...

We work on backlinks to increase PR not SER?
So technically someone could get into the #1 spot without any backlinks?

[tylerjaysen]

yeah always start off with good and readable content that is fun to read....this will help your articles to spread throughout the web and also get links back to your site...google loves this stuff and will reward your site for it. It also goes without saying that the content must be unique too.

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by Hooker

So let me see if I am understanding...

We work on backlinks to increase PR not SER?
So technically someone could get into the #1 spot without any backlinks?

I never said that and I do not know where you came up with that.

My point was only that PR is created by backlinks. Nothing else generates PR.