Comments on: Is poor SEO behind thelondonpaper’s failure?

By: Journalists: Learn SEO or Get Killed by Patch.comMeakin Armstrong | Meakin Armstrong

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:17:03 +0000

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By: sonali sen

sonali sen — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:08:10 +0000

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By: firstconversion

firstconversion — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:59:49 +0000

As a londoner and an SEO, I can confirm it died under the weight of shit reporting. Now if it would only take the other rags with it.

It slowly got worse and worse over the years, recycled content on top of yesterdays news

By: John

John — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:38:33 +0000

cool site…javascript rule!

By: malcolm coles

malcolm coles — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:55:55 +0000

Which leaves Inka Technology….

Let me get this straight. You are leaving a comment on a dofollow blog using the keywords ‘SEO company’ to link to your lame website (if you’re going to claim to offer highly-skilled writers, maybe learn how to use an apostrophe? If you’d like me to make another 100 or so recommendations to improve your SEO, grammar and usability, do let me know …) – and you’re calling ME out for not keeping up with the times?

As I said above, meta descriptions don’t help your rankings, but they do affect click-through rates. This holds as true today as it ever has.

By: malcolm coles

malcolm coles — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:46:41 +0000

Everyone: Sorry for not replying, but I was on holiday. And sorry for the headline, which was completely overblown compared to what I’d actually written…

So Chris, no I’m not suggesting that. It might have helped though …

Dave, while that may be true for a search on thelondonpaper itself, it’s not true of all pages. So for a search on tottenham hotspur, the description google shows is:
“gallery: all; Tottenham Hotspur; your pics. The ladies look out over the Firth of Forth to promote their ‘Warren & Hanbury …”.
There are many other similar examples.

If you’re trying to get people to click on one of your results rather than someone else’s, you’ve either got to rely on your brand or the text snippet. Not setting the meta description reduces the probability of someone clicking your result.

Joanna, yes, the headline was a bit unfair (or maybe just stupid on my part) as you say. I wouldn’t say the meta description issue was the developers’ fault though. I presume they were developing to meet some sort of business requirements … Or maybe they vetoed the idea of using them in which case it was …

By: SEO Company

SEO Company — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:37:21 +0000

just setting meta meta descriptions are not going to help at all, it is an old technique. it used to help but now it is history. those SEOs rely on meta descriptions who are not expert in SEO field or knowing nothing what field is all about.

By: paulbradshaw

paulbradshaw — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 07:12:03 +0000

A very good point, Dave – thanks for pointing that out.

By: riverScrap.com

riverScrap.com — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:49:08 +0000

Crappy SEO was just one symptom of their entirely broken and redundant media offering. Guess I’ll have to find my Peaches Geldof news elsewhere. Oh well.

http://www.thelondonpaper.com/people/peaches-geldof

By: Joanna Geary

Joanna Geary — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:39:09 +0000

“Is poor SEO behind thelondonpaper’s failure?”

Errr. I think we can safely say the answer to that is “no”.

I wouldn’t have commented, but I do feel a need to speak up for the innovative and hard-working web team at thelondonpaper.

They relaunched the website in April as the first UK newspaper website to use the Drupal content management system.

Whilst SEO is, of course, very valuable, suggesting the quality of their website’s meta descriptions was responsible for the closure of the entire operation is rather unfair!