[alchemist]

Hi guys,

I've recently redeveloped my website and after testing it, I tried to be conscientious and added independent meta descriptions to each of my pages. I added a new sitemap.xml and verified the site using Google Webmaster Tools. My website is appearing in the SERP's, but annoyingly, my well written description is not. Instead, the description is a string of image alt text rather than the meta description. It goes without saying that this isn't the most informative and will more than likely cause some potential customers to skip the site over.

Any ideas how to correct this? I've changed the title of my page ever so slightly to try and get Google to reindex the page and have redone everything in Google Webmaster Tools, all to know avail. It's pretty annoying, given the improvement to the website, that the SERP listings are all screwy!

If you're interested, google "Tony Hart Photo", it's that top one.

Cheers all.

[darrenbale]

Google doesn't always use the meta description, instead they pull content off the site. Unfortunately for you the only text available is the alt tags.

[alchemist]

Ah. Well that's very annoying.

Can you suggest a non-dodgy, non-penalised way of getting round this? Text is simply not appropriate for the homepage of my site. I used to get ripped to shreds by other photographers for having way too much text and not enough imagery on my site. Now Google is screwing me over!

[wizely]

If you're selling to photographers then listen to them and have no text... if you want to sell to people and want to give Google something to chew on? Those pesky uncool words are the way to go.
You can always legitimately put it beneath the 'fold' if substance over style offends you!

Putting it another way... obviously it's vital to showcase your photography and they should take pride of place, but images work better with copy in the same way as images help enrich copy. Even if it's something as simple as "Hello - this is me, I do this, take a look".

[gentlefoot]

This is the description being displayed now. Seems Google's index has updated since you made your original post.

"Surrey wedding photographer Tony Hart is a specialist in reportage and photojournalism covering Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Sussex, Kent, ..."

[alchemist]

Hi,

In the end I changed the first image on the page (which happened to be my Logo) to have the same Alt text as the Meta Description. I don't know where exactly Google is picking up the description it's using in the SERP's from, but this looks to be the description I was aiming for, so either way it's working. I know sticking this sort of info in an Alt tag isn't best practice, but I'd like my site to look like something other than spam in the SERP's!