3 Incredible Blog Growth Tricks (and How I Got on Lifehacker)

I’m not the biggest fan of discussing “tricks” when it comes to talking about blog growth.
Sometimes, however, there are a few tidbits of info that can have a big impact on your subscriber numbers, and when that’s the case, it’s worth talking about.
Today I’d like to reveal 3 tips I’ve been using recently in order to grow my own blog.

1.) The power of email

Recently, I had a post get featured on Lifehacker.com, and the result was a ton of traffic back to my site.
How did I get this to happen.
Would you believe it was as simple as a single email?
It’s true!
Well… there’s a bit more to it.
The key to getting featured on these big sites (see Steve Kamb’s experience of getting featured on Gizmodo) is to create the kind of content that they already share.
Here’s what I did: I saw that Lifehacker had already shared a post by my buddy Leo Wildrich on What Multitasking Does to Our Brains.
These are the kind of things you need to look out for.
I knew that if Lifehacker was willing to post about some cool psychology studies that reveal something about our brains, they’d be willing to do it again (as long as the article was different and interesting).
So, I wrote up a piece called How our Brain Tries to Sabotage Our Goals and had it featured on the Buffer blog.
I then shot both Leo and the Lifehacker contributor email a quick message about wanting to see if my post was suitable for Lifehacker.
Within a week, I got an email back saying it was going to be featured, and I’ve had great results since, all for a little extra effort both before and after creating my post.
You can do the same thing by finding popular pieces of content on large sites (not limited to the Gawker network!) and then pitching the original author a piece of content that you’ve written on a similar topic.
If the first piece did well for them, they are going to want more.
Derek Halpern would call this “The Drafting Technique“, which asserts that journalists are always on the hunt for content that will perform well, and it should be your job to give it to them.
The “drafting” effect comes in by following up on a previously popular piece, because you won’t have to make the argument that your piece will do well: they already know because they’ve already had a similar piece.
Are you reaching out to the right people to promote your content?

2.) Capturing leads on SlideShare

Earlier this year I wrote about getting on the homepage of SlideShare and how it can effect your traffic.
One thing that I didn’t know was how effective capturing leads on SlideShare can be (especially email subscriber).
Over on HelpScout, we did a test with our 75 Customer Service Facts & Statistics by putting a big chunk of the content on SlideShare:
It’s been really effective so far, because the call-to-action at the end of the presentation is much more effective if there is more content to consume.
A few things to keep in mind is that design is important and that your call-to-action should include a link to an opt-in page for more: don’t just tell people where to go, allow them to get there easily.
Fortunately, SlideShare allows you to include links into your PowerPoint presentations, so this is easy to do.
As I mentioned, formatting a large e-Book like we did for HelpScout has been super effective so far.
Readers seem much more likey to check out your call-to-action if it’s more of the same great content that they’ve already been reading.

3.) How to Easily Network with Fellow Bloggers

Networking has been the greatest asset that I’ve leverage in gaining the thousands of subscribers that I have on both Sparring Mind and Sophistefunk.
I talked about how I didn’t even use guest posting for Sophistefunk, relying totally on artists interviews and word of mouth from fans and other blogs to grow my site.
I relayed to you above how I reached out via email to both Leo and the Lifehacker staff to feature my content, and you can probably guess how that payed off (hundreds of new email subscribers in a single day).
Point is, networking is a powerful tool for growing your blog.
Most bloggers don’t know where to begin in this aspect though.
One place to start is by guest blogging.
If you need to find sites, you should be hitting up places like AllTop (browse by your category, they even had one for electronic music which I used).
Once you get started, you’ll find it easier to land guest blogging gigs.
The power here isn’t necessarily in the articles though: although guest posts can send you a fair amount of traffic, the real power comes in establishing connections with fellow bloggers and getting on their radar.
I’ve done a few guest posts for the Buffer blog, but the support Leo has shown for me and my business far outweighs the direct benefits I saw from posting for his blog.
This goes a same for a lot of bloggers I’ve connected with, and this isn’t niche specific: networking is the way to go no matter what you write about.
Don’t be afraid to shoot out friendly emails (not promoting yourself, just asking to connect) to bloggers, writers and journalists that cover your niche, you’ll never know what kind of connections you’ll be able to establish until you start.
Guest posting is good for networking because it allows you to offer something to busy people, and it starts the process of reciprocity with no former connection between the two parties.

Over To You

Thanks for making it to the bottom of my post!
Here’s what’s next:

• Let me know which of these techniques you are going to try first.
• Have you ever been featured on a huge site? How were you able to get featured? I’d love to hear your story.
• As a special thanks for reading my post, feel free to download my free e-Book on ‘Conversion Psychology’ or grab the HelpScout e-Book on 25 Ways to Thank Your Customers, totally free!

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the comments!
Gregory Ciotti is a regular DailyBlogTips columnist and a content strategist for HelpScout. You can get more from Greg on his blog Sparring Mind.

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33 Ways to Instant Blogging Failure

There are a lot of posts written about blogging success, but perhaps not quite as many written on why blogs fail. Since I believe failure is such a great part of the entrepreneurial learning process, and you really only fail when you quit, I thought I’d write an “homage” to failure if you will. Here you go: 33 ways to fail at blogging:

1. Not having a plan. Your blog just be a business some day, but you should run it like one now. That means spend time writing down your goals (like physically writing them down!) about where you hope to be in a month, six months, a year, etc.
2. Stop trying. I can’t tell you how many blogs I’ve started, worked on regularly for about three weeks, and abandoned. Of course, sometimes it is better to realize when you’ve hit a brick wall, but other times it just takes perseverance to break through The Dip and push on.
3. Stop caring. Apathy for your topic is a close second to #1, but it is slightly different. Lack of caring happens when you forget why you’re blogging in the first place—the energy for your topic is lost; all the great ideas fleshed out, overworked, and drained.
4. Having the wrong expectations. Similarly, if you have impossibly high expectations for your site that don’t align with the real world, burnout and apathy might be nearby.
5. Bad design. Having a site that projects the wrong image can be like trying to open a 5-star restaurant in a strip-mall. Possible? Sure. Likely to succeed? Probably not.
6. Too many ads. Corbett Barr of Think Traffic likes to start his students on a “no ads” blogging approach, only adding them in when the blogs are ready. “Ready” is obviously subjective, but it seems to me like having fewer than 2,000 visits a day might be pushing it.
7. Not having a big orange RSS button. This is a small thing seemingly, but I’m of the type where if I don’t have a super-easy way to subscribe to your content, I won’t come back (it’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just that I’ll forget). It doesn’t need to be orange, but you know…
8. Writing bad headlines. Or at least, not writing awesome headlines. Take the time to read how to write the best headlines possible, and practice them.
9. Not optimizing your About page. People who read your stuff want to read about who you are. Some guys can get away with being a meme, but you’re a person. Give us a big ‘ol mugshot of yourself and a couple paragraphs about why we should want to buy you a beer.
10. Not cross-linking your posts. Blogging—and the web, if you think about it—is ALL about links. Don’t go overboard, but remember that once you get someone on your site, you don’t want them to leave. Link to old posts, new ones, and pages on your site they might enjoy. Lead them to your product, if you have one.
11. Not setting up systems. I love systems. My first post at ProBlogger was on blogging systems, and I recommend it now, too.
12. Having a site that looks like an MFA (Made-for-AdSense) site. Unless, of course, you’re solely trying to blog for profit (nothing wrong with that, but it’s much harder to do when it’s a personal blog). If your design reeks of over-the-top AdSense ads, banners, and in-text link ads, it’s distracting and off-putting for visitors.
13. Bad SEO. Sure, you might not be trying to focus on organic search results for your “personal experiences” blog, but there’s a reason Google’s algorithm is such a proprietary equation: it KNOWS what’s good and bad, when it comes to content. If you haven’t taken at least a little time to optimize your content for a few keywords and add links, it can seem stale, vague, and boring for your readers.
14. No images. If there’s one universal truth that seems to still be pervasive in blogging (and even then there are exceptions), it’s “have at least one image in every post.” Images add color, depth, and flow to otherwise stagnant content.
15. Bad writing style. Your writing should certainly reflect who you are, but I doubt you talk in long-winded paragraphs. You probably also don’t sound like an advanced legal professor—tone it down, trim it down, and let us “hear” who you are.
16. Bad content layout. Going with the prior example, you shouldn’t let large paragraphs of content into your writing. Take a look at the LiveHacked blog, Jeff Goins’ blog, and read some Ernest Hemingway to get an idea for what short, easy-to-read text is all about.
17. Not using lists. This concept is not something that needs to be in every post, but if you visit some of the more popular blogs (including this one!), you’ll often see that the most popular content is blog posts organized into lists.
18. Having too many categories. The guys over at Thesis have a great policy on how many categories a blog should have. You’re not Huffington Post or Yahoo! Don’t have a thousand categories with one post in each.
19. Placing posts in too many categories. Also, don’t stick each post into every single possible category that seems like it might fit. Give each post one—maybe two—categories. It will help Google as well as your visitors find information faster.
20. Being annoying. Some bloggers have an “air” of rudeness to their writing—let them do it, because they’ve figured out how. For you, it’s better to be nice, humble, and kind—especially to your commenters.
21. Not having comments enabled. This is certainly a topic for debate, but I like to be able to leave a comment (looking at you, Mr. Godin!). I do understand, however, how huge sites can’t maintain the massive amounts of comments—and spam—that comes in. But you’re not that big yet—turn them on!
22. Placing too much on the sidebars. Again, this fault seems to plague “little-guys-trying-to-be-big-guys.” It’s not that you don’t have as much to say, it’s just that in the early years of your site, you need to be especially clear, almost to the point of minimalistic, about your site design.
23. Not capturing visitors’ attention. I highly recommend going through a copywriting course like Copyblogger—even if you’re writing about your trip to Africa, you can probably learn a few tips about drawing your readers in with a great writing style. See #9 and #14.
24. Not building a list. If you ever want to build a site that can generate income—even a little—start building a mailing list now. Even without ads, your visitors—if you’re offering great content—want that extra “connection” with you. Let them sign up to a mailing list. (I prefer MailChimp or Aweber).
25. Not engaging with visitors. Engagement can look like following up to commenters, starting dialogue through social media, etc.—just be available to your readers when they want to discuss your topic.
26. Not adding value. This one’s easy—if you’re not giving me a reason to come back, I won’t.
27. Too much self-promotion. If your site only links to other posts you’ve written on your site, and completely disregards the fact that there might be another blog with a somewhat similar topic, and your Twitter account is full of “check me out!” tweets, I’m gone like Donkey Kong.
28. Not enough self-promotion. Okay, okay—there is another side to the coin. You must take the time (I recommend an hour a week) to practice reaching out, engaging, and yeah—self-promoting your work. You did work hard on it, right?
29. “Shiny Object Syndrome.” There’s always another course to sign up for, always another product to buy teaching yada yada, and there’s always another traffic-generation tactic that you must try and implement now. Please resist—I’ve tried many (not all, but more than I should have). These products and “shiny objects” aren’t bad, they’re just probably bad for where you are in your blogging journey. Instead, read #25.
30. Not guest posting. Guess what? The best way of generating traffic, attention, and leading visitors back to your site is free. It’s called guest posting, and if you’ve not really put in the time to try it, check out Jon Morrow’s course at www.guestblogging.com (yeah, I know I just said not to grab at the shiny objects, but at least check out his free videos. He has quite a story, too!).
31. Not interacting with other “small fries.” Or “medium fries,” or “large fries” (or “ProBlogger-size fries”). I’m currently working with a few bloggers who have similar niche markets and are of similar sizes to my blog. If you’re not reaching out to these people, and trying to build relationships, don’t come crying to me when the world moves on without you.
32. Not reading. Read more. Period. Whether it’s news related to your industry, other blogs (I have about 300 blogs I read in my RSS reader), or just awesome fiction thrillers, you need to read as much as you can. It helps your understanding of your marketplace and it can greatly enhance your writing abilities.
33. Not writing enough. Back to #1 and #25, if you feel stuck, write. If you feel like quitting, write. If you feel like you’ve made it (yay! My post just went live on ProBlogger!) write. There’s never enough you can write—since blogging is directly monetized through words, you need more of them to make more of it. Kapeesh?

There you go—33 things to go work on right now. And I do realize there are more—many more. Let’s get it going in the comments section and see what else you can come up with (and what I forgot!).
You can read more from Nick Thacker on LiveHacked.com, where he publishes tips and tricks to hack your life and make it more suitable to your lifestyle.

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How to Make Your Blog Stand Out

Whether you’re blogging for profit, pleasure or promotion, your primary goal will always be to get as many eyeballs as possible on your posts. As the bigger kids on the blogging block – like Daily Blog Tips – have proven, it’s possible to start from scratch and attract a substantial, highly profitable following over time.

How to Make Your Blog Stand Out

Some of the most popular niche sites such as Mashable began as hobby blogs and now serve up millions of page views per month. If you want to get to that level, there are a few things you should keep in mind when structuring your blog’s content and layout.
Niche It Up
First and foremost, memorable blogs tend to zero in on a lower-level niche at a particular level of specificity. For instance, you won’t have much success by focusing a blog on “technology”, as it’s too broad a topic. Google, Bing and the like will favour the heavyweights when it comes to search engine rankings and visitors are more likely to drift towards a trusted source. A more reasonable niche to pursue would be “creative industry technology”. It’s a lot easier to corner a smaller niche than it is to dominate a broad swath of the market, and you can deliver higher-quality content to your readers by narrowing your focus.
Avoid the Clichés and Find Your Voice
One of the main problems with most bloggers is that they use a generic approach to crafting blog posts and entries. While such utilitarian writing styles have their place in standard reviews, tutorials and news items, they don’t really resonate with readers and are extremely forgettable. When is the last time you saw a post on Yahoo News or even Mashable that really stood out to you? Bloggers like Seth Godin and James Altucher have a distinctive writing style that’s easily recognisable, which is something you should attempt to emulate in your own way.
Take Risks and Be Passionate
When you take an unconventional stand, people respect your integrity and will debate you on your point of view. Don’t be controversial just for the sake of being edgy, but avoid vanilla-flavored boilerplateop-eds that are forgettable. In addition, you should blog about something that really lights your fire intellectually. When you work on something you love, your passion shines through the underlying content and attracts a dedicated, die-hard core of readers that are extremely loyal. Furthermore, those fanatical readers often do your evangelising for you and promote your blog in an organic manner through social media channels.
Build a Destination & a Reputation
Probably the most brilliant thing Apple ever did with the iPhone was to create an all-inclusive platform for users. In other words, they crafted an entire ecosystem instead of just an operating system or a piece of hardware. Alongside iTunes, the iPhone forms a one-stop iOS destination for apps and media content. Your blog should be a one-stop shop for information on your niche that your readers will immediately jump to when they need advice. Make sure your deep content is well-indexed and easy to find, and invest time in perfecting internal linking to increase time-on-site and boost page views.
Parting Words
The most important thing to remember is that very few people strike gold on their first attempt on any given blog. If a successful, high-traffic blog is integral to your overall business plan, you’ll just have to tough it out and plug away until you discover the magic formula. Finally, always remember that all the fancy software and SEO tactics in the world can’t replace quality content that delivers value. Craft relatable content that first and foremost helps your audience, and the traffic will follow sooner or later.
Matt Beswick is a digital consultant based in the UK, specialising in SEO, and also runs Pet365. Find him on Twitter @mattbeswick.

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NoFollow Feedburner Feed Links?

Inserting the rel=’nofollow’ tag within links will inform Google and other search engines that they should not follow that link (i.e. not sharing the link love). Most of the times using this attribute is a bad idea because it will remove the value of external links, like in the Wikipedia case.

What about the links pointing to your Feedburner feed(http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourfeed)? Feedburner provides an outstanding service and they do deserve recognition, but could a rel=’nofollow’ tag on those links have some benefits?
First of all many blogs have their Feedburner feed page ranking higher on search engines than the blog itself for most keywords. This is not optimal since a potential reader might end up visiting the feed page and not visiting the blog at all.
Secondly, provided you publish full feeds, the Feedburner feed page will also have the same content of your Homepage, possibly resulting on duplicate content penalties.
Inserting a nofollow tag on the feed links could resolve the first problem and improve the second one, specially if your feed links are sitewide and your blog has a high Pagerank.
Update: Marketing Pilgrim has a post with more suggestions for this issue.

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Search Engine Ranking Factors

It is always a good idea to be updated on the factors that search engines use to determine search results and rank websites. SEOMoz released a very detailed document titled “Search Engine Ranking Factors V2”, which outlines the views of 34 SEO experts regarding how Google’s algorithm works. Below you will find the Top 5 positive and negative factors on the study:

Top 5 Positive Factors

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag
2. Global Link Popularity of Site
3. Anchor Text of Inbound Link
4. Link Popularity within the Site
5. Age of Site

Top 5 Negative Factors

1. Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots
2. Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content on the Index
3. External Links to Low Quality/Spam sites
4. Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links
5. Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages

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How Google Ranks Blogs

Google Blog Search is a new tool that is gaining popularity on the Internet lately. The Blog Search might also be a good source of visitors if your blog rank on the first positions for specific keywords, but what factors does Google take into account to elaborate the search results?

The “Seo by the Sea” blog has an interesting articleanalyzing a new patent from Google that contains some indicators about the positive and negative factors affecting blog ranking, check it out:
Positive Factors:

• Popularity of the blog (RSS subscriptions)
• Implied popularity (how many clicks search results get)
• Inclusion in blogrolls
• Inclusion in “high quality” blogrolls
• Tagging of posts (also from users)
• References to the blog by sources other than blogs
• Pagerank

Negative Factors:

• Predictable frequency of posts (short bursts of posts might indicate spam)
• Content of the blog does not match content of the feed
• Content includes spam keywords
• Duplicated content
• Posts have all the same size
• Link distribution of the blog
• Posts primarily link to one page or site

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Apply for the SEO Clinic

The Search Engine Journal started a new project called SEO Clinic. They will basically select one blog every week and optimize it. The tips and advice will include link building techniques, site navigation, usability, copywriting, social media optimization and more.
The project is a free service, and considering the expertise of those guys I guess that it could be worth even for established sites. You can candidate your blog for the SEO Clinic through the contact form on the website.

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Gather .edu and .gov backlinks

It is widely accepted that .edu and .gov backlinks carry a larger weight for search engine algorithms. Despite the fact that Google has never admitted it (sometimes it even neglected) most SEO and online marketing experts would confirm that .edu and .gov links outperform other extensions in terms of search ranking juice.There are several ways to collect those links, below I will explain two of them, depending on whether your blog has relevant content to educational and governmental websites or not.
Blogs with relevant content
The first step to get some .edu and .gov backlinks pointing to your website is to locate sites related to your topic ending with those extensions. Using the Google operator site:.edu and site:.gov combined with the keywords of your blog should enable you to find an extensive list of such sites.

site:.edu "keyword 1" 

site:.gov "keyword 1"

Once you have a list of sites explore them and select the ones you think would have a higher probability of sharing some external links with your blog. Finally contact the webmaster of those sites and point them to the content on your blog that could be relevant and valuable to those sites. It is always a good idea to link first to the sites before asking the backlink.
Blogs without relevant content
If your blog does not have content that could be relevant or valuable to educational and governmental websites your should look for types of sites that allow users to create a backlink without interacting with the webmaster, and the most common types of those sites are blogs and online forums.
Again you can use the Google operators to generate a list of such sites. Notice that the site:.edu argument limits the search results to sites with a .edu extension while the inurl:blog attribute ensures that results will have the word blog on the URL structure.

site:.edu inurl:blog "keyword 1"

site:.edu inurl:forum "keyword 1"

site:.gov inurl:blog "keyword 1"

site:.gov inurl:forum "keyword 1"    

Finally track down the sites with discussions relevant to the topic of your blog and join the conversation, leaving a backlink to your site either through the comment section or on inside a forum thread. Bear in mind that you should not spam those sites for the sake of getting as many backlinks as possible. Make sure that you are adding useful information and not just polluting the online environment.
Update: Check out the “Enhanced” version of those search queries.

 

                         

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Get rid of the calendar

Many blog templates or WordPress themes come with a calendar by default. This feature could be useful if you write content that is dependent on time. Someone writing about his journey across the Sahara desert, for instance, would need to have a calendar so that readers would be able to track posts in a chronological order and find posts of a specific day.Get rid of the calendar

Most bloggers, however, write about topics that are not dependent on time. The first question you need to ask yourself is: “Will my readers benefit from having a calendar where they can click on a particular day and check what I have written on that day?”. The answer is probably “no” in most of the cases. The calendar, therefore, will only clutter your sidebar and confuse your visitors.

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Create a robots.txt file

The robots.txt file is used to instruct search engine robots about what pages on your website should be crawled and consequently indexed. Most websites have files and folders that are not relevant for search engines (like images or admin files) therefore creating a robots.txt file can actually improve your website indexation.
A robots.txt is a simple text file that can be created with Notepad. If you are using WordPress a sample robots.txt file would be:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /trackback/

“User-agent: *” means that all the search bots (from Google, Yahoo, MSN and so on) should use those instructions to crawl your website. Unless your website is complex you will not need to set different instructions for different spiders.
“Disallow: /wp-” will make sure that the search engines will not crawl the WordPress files. This line will exclude all files and foldes starting with “wp-” from the indexation, avoiding duplicated content and admin files.
If you are not using WordPress just substitute the Disallow lines with files or folders on your website that should not be crawled, for instance:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /any other folder to be excluded/

After you created the robots.txt file just upload it to your root directory and you are done!

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How to setup a 301 Redirect

The “301 Permanent Redirect” is the most efficient and search engine friendly method for redirecting websites. You can use it in several situations, including:

• to redirect an old website to a new address
• to setup several domains pointing to one website
• to enforce only one version of your website (www. or no-www)
• to harmonize a URL structure change

There are several ways to setup a 301 Redirect, below I will cover the most used ones:
PHP Single Page Redirect
In order to redirect a static page to a new address simply enter the code below inside the index.php file.

<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.newdomain.com/page.html");
exit();
?>

PHP Canonical Redirect
The Canonical 301 Redirect will add (or remove) the www. prefixes to all the pages inside your domain. The code below redirects the visitors of the http://domain.com version to http://www.domain.com.

<?php
if (substr($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'],0,3) != 'www') {
header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
header('Location: http://www.'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']
.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
}
?>

Apache .htaccess Singe Page Redirect
In order to use this method you will need to create a file named .htaccess (not supported by Windows-based hosting) and place it on the root directory of your website, then just add the code below to the file.

Redirect 301 /old/oldpage.htm /new/http://www.domain.com/newpage.htm

Apache .htaccess Canonical Redirect
Follow the same steps as before but insert the code below instead (it will redirect all the visitors accessing http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

ASP Single Page Redirect
This redirect method is used with the Active Server Pages platform.

<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader='Location','http://www.new-url.com/'
%>

ASP Canonical Redirect

The Canonical Redirect with ASP must be located in a script that is executed in every page on the server before the page content starts.

<%
If InStr(Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME"),"www") = 0 Then
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www."
& Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_HOST")
& Request.ServerVariables("SCRIPT_NAME")
End if
%>

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Optimize your Meta Description Tag

The Meta Description Tag (placed between the head and /head tags) is used by some search engines to create the snippets of text that you see right below the results on search queries. It does not carry any weight in the search algorithm of Google, but it does carry a certain weight for Yahoo and other smaller search engines so you should not neglect it altogether.
One problem with the Meta Description Tag of most websites is that it is static. People usually include a general description about the site, which is suitable only to the home page. Should a visitor find an internal page (say a single post) through a search engine the tag will be the same, containing no information about the content of that internal page whatsoever. You can use the SEO tools listed here to check the quality of your meta description tags.
In order to optimize your Meta Description Tag you should make it dynamic, making sure that it will include the first few lines of text of every single page on your site. A very simple way to do this under the WordPress platform is to make the Description tag equal to the post excerpt, like the code below illustrates.

            <meta name="description" content="<?php the_excerpt() ?>" />

Alternatively you can download a plugin called Head META Description. Just upload the plugin, activate it and insert the following line on your header:

                                             <?php head_meta_desc(); ?>


The plugin will generate the Meta Description automatically, either by extracting the first words of your posts or by displaying the post excerpt (you can configure it).

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