Nah, I don’t think you’re being a jerk. You have a point but in my opinion (I’m an SEO), the issue you refer to is not a biggie.
I’m using version 3.6 and this is what I get on my site which touts my SEO services in Central Florida
Meta Description #1 (the one this plugin creates)
line #32 <meta name=”description” content=”Looking for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services in Central Florida?…
Meta Description #2 (the one you object to)
line #44 <h2 id=”site-description”>Blasting your site to the TOP of page one!</h2>
Now maybe this is a function of WP version 3.6 but my site’s “tagline” becomes an h2 tag and changes from a strictly speaking “meta description” to a “site description.” (When I’m optimizing a website, I always optimize the tried-and-true “meta description” tag).
I have no objection to this for several reasons:
It is commonly known that h2 tags have no SEO value (except as much as amy other textual content on a given webpage), unlike an h1 or a title tag.
Although meta description tags DO have SEO value, they do not help to raise your rankings.
In my opinion, multiple meta description tags will not hurt your rankings. My reasoning is that, currently, the main SEO benefit of meta descriptions is to give the search engines a snippet of text to place with your listing. Even if you had multiple MDs, Google would simply choose the one with the keywords that most closely match whatever was typed in the search engine query box. Uh, you DO put keywords into your meta description tags, don’t you?
Finally, I’d like to point out that this plugin puts the meta description that it creates before the other “site description” tag. This implies to the search engines that it is more important than the latter one because it came first.
If one really wants to nit-pick, one should also give credit where credit is due.
