The Meta Description Tag Explained
- So What is the Meta Description Tag?
- Meta Description Tag Code
- How To Add The Meta Description Tag To Your Page
- The Meta Description is Your Advertisement
- Improve Click-Through Rates from the SERPS
- Tips For Meta Description Usage
- The Meta Description Is Not Really Required
So What is the Meta Description Tag?
The Meta Description Tag can be used on each unique web page that you control. It is placed above the Tag within in the of your HTML document. By itself, it looks like this:
Meta Description Tag Code
<meta name=”description” content=”YOUR Description of the Page” />
You don’t need a Meta Description Generator! All you need to do is copy and paste the code above into your document and change YOUR Description of the Page with your own text.
And here is what the Meta Description Tag looks like above the TITLE Tag within the HEAD Tag:
How To Add The Meta Description Tag To Your Page
Add the Meta Description Tag above the TITLE Tag in-between the HEAD tags like this:
<head>
<meta name=”description” content=”YOUR Description of the Page” />
<title>YOUR Page Title Goes Here</title>
</head>
The Meta Description is Your Advertisement
The Meta Description is often displayed by Search Engines within the SERPS after a search is performed. What this means is that the Meta Description Tag should be used to write a short compelling and exciting advertisement for that page (Not Your Entire Website!).
A sample SERP:
Contrary to popular belief, the Meta Description and Meta Keyword Tags are not used by Google when calculating relevance, but they do sometimes use it within their Search Engine Results Pages. Having said that, there are many other Search Engines which probably still use it to calculate relevance.
You will notice when viewing a SERP that the keywords you just searched are bolded within the Meta Description. This can often play an important part in increasing click-through rates.
Therefore, even though the Meta Description Tag is not an important factor when it comes to actual SEO, it can be an important part of the On-Page Optimization process depending on your website content and the key phrases you are targeting.
Improve Click-Through Rates from the SERPS
Treat the content of the Meta Description Tag as your advertisement to drive traffic from the SERPS to your pages. Next time you are using a search engine, pay attention to what causes you to click a particular result. Use this insight to craft your own compelling advertisement.
This is just as important as if you were writing a PPC ad which costs you money! The better the ad, the better will be your click-through rates.
Tips For Meta Description Usage
Make Each Page Unique – The content of the Meta Description Tag should be unique to each page on your website. If the Meta Description is the same on all your pages, people could think that all your pages contain exactly the same information and thus will not click-through.
Don’t Use “Quotes” – If “quotes” are used within the Meta Description, the description will be cut of by certain engines. Play it safe and use only alpha-numeric characters.
No Spamming – Make sure that the content of your Meta Description also exists in the body of your page as real content. Don’t trick people by placing irrelevant content into the Meta Description which does not match the content of your page.
Not only does this practice piss people off (inclding myself), it has been known to get pages penalized by certain search engines because it is considered spam. Play it safe and make sure whatever content is within the Meta Description also exists on the page as well.
Meta Description Tag Length – Most search engines do not display more than 160 characters within the SERPS. Therefore the length of this Tag should be no longer than 160 characters.
You can use as little or as many characters as you like, but what’s the point if no more than 160 characters gets displayed. I have heard other recommendations for length such as 175 characters, but as a general rule, I stick with 160 max.
The Meta Description Tag Is Not Really Required
Search Engines can also pull relevant content from your pages and display that content within the SERPS and the searched keywords will be bolded as usual.
Webmasters and Internet Marketers who are targeting short specific keywords and phrases generally use the Meta Description Tag on their pages, while others who have lot’s of content such as a blog, or an article site tend to leave it up to the search engines to scrape the long tail keywords from the page.
About The Author
The author, Ed Zivkovic has been an SEO webmaster since 2001. Recently, he has put together an easy to understand do-it-yourself SEO course anybody can use to increase their search engine positions. More information can be found at: BacklinksFever.com
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