How To Write A Proper Meta Description

17 Nov How To Write A Proper Meta Description

In my mind the only real meta tag of SEO significance is “meta description”. But like its sister meta keywords, the meta description tag is not as important as it one was.

The description tag is just that, a short description of your webpage, and really nothing more.

<blockquote>Common format: &lt;meta name=”description” content=”&lt;YOUR DESCRIPTION HERE&gt;”/&gt;</blockquote>

While Yahoo, Google and other search engines do occasionally draw snippets from description, its overall weight when it comes to determining your search engine ranking position seem to diminish each year.

That said, a good description that shows up in the rankings can influence clickthroughs.

So keep you description tag short, sweet and to the point while keeping in mind you’re your description may be the text that is given below your title tag in the search engine rankings. Being a little bit of a salesman in this instance doesn’t hurt.

If your website is about the rock band Metallica, a fair description tag might be:

<blockquote>
&lt;meta name=”description” content=”This is a great website devoted to my favorite band Metallica.”&gt;</blockquote>

For most webmasters that description works, but why not make it even better and more enticing?

<blockquote>&lt;meta name=”description” content=”Learn things about Metallica you never knew. Their history, their CDs, their tour dates and more.”&gt;</blockquote>

So you can have a little fun with your description on the chance that it does show up in the ranks. Also make sure to put your main keywords from your title tag in the description, this way they might get bolded in the search rankings but again, don’t over do it by stuffing it with keywords.

Keep it to about 30 words maximum and make sure that each and every page description is unique across your site.

And unlike meta keywords, despite its devaluation it too easy not to include and your prose might show up in the rankings, so go for it.