Maxing Out Your META Descriptions
With the release of Thesis 1.2 comes a couple of fantastic tools to help you max out your search engine optimization by allowing you to define custom descriptions on not only your individual posts & pages but also you category archives!
The first thing you’ll want to make note of is a new field in the Thesis Options’ “Custom Field Keys” section. This new field key, labeled “write a custom meta description,” is by default simply “meta”; although, you may choose to change this to “description” or “about” or something which is easier for you to remember as you are editing your posts. Hereafter, we’ll call this the Meta Key.
Certain plugins may already have used a custom field key to control post descriptions; if that is the case, change the name of the Meta Key to whatever the plugin was using. You’ll then be able to disable the plugin while still making use of the descriptions entered while using it.
Once you know your Meta Key, you’re going to want to make use of it, which is very easy.
While editing a post, scroll down to the “Custom Fields” section. The “key” will of course be your Meta Key; type it in, or select it from the drop-down list if you’ve used it on a previous post. For “value,” write a description of your post, a description which you’d be proud to have showing up for your post in search engine results.
Press the “Add Custom Field” button, save your post, and if this is the first time you’ve done this, you should view the post and then view its source to ensure that the meta description is present in the <head> area of your site.
Category Descriptions
Adding category descriptions has been a feature of WordPress for a long time. Check it out by editing a category via the Manage ➔ Categories panel.
Using the vast majority of available themes, writing a category description is of no use — it isn’t going to show up anywhere!
Thesis, though, is different. If you have category descriptions for your category, they will not only show up, they show up in two very useful places: the <head> area of your site as a meta description as well as the title of the page when viewing category archives of described categories.
Using these two tools will help you to take control over how your site appears in search results such as Google’s. The more enticing, descriptive, and relevant your descriptions are, the better their effect will be!