The Meta Description Tag
Cheap Registras By Jill Whalen
Updated October 2004
It is therefore important that your Meta Description Tag is nicely composed describing your page offering while enticing the user to click on your listing. open Head tag Meta name="description" content="Here you write description that covers the most important aspects of meta tags in relation to website optimization or SEO." closed Head tag Useful Tips for Writing Meta Description
Name Com The keywords and phrases you use in your Meta description tag
don't
affect your page's ranking in the search engines (for the most
part),
but this tag can still come in handy in your overall SEO
campaigns.
What Is the Meta Description Tag?
This prohibition on use of the marks includes, without limitation, use as Meta tags, in domain names, and on other sites.
Godaddy The Meta description tag is a snippet of HTML code that belongs
inside
the <Head> </Head> section of a Web page. It usually
is placed after
the Title tag and before the Meta keywords tag, although the order
is
not important.
< / META name="description" content="Meta Description Tag Goes Here"> META name="keywords" content="Meta Keywords Tag Goes Here"> / If Meta Tags are invisible to users, then why are they important The simple answer is that Google and other search engines use both Title and Meta Tags to help determine the rank of the page. Therefore, if your Title and Meta Tags have relevant keywords, your page will be more likely to rank well.
Parked Com The proper syntax for this HTML tag is:
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Your descriptive sentence or
two
goes here.">
If you have great domain names for sale, we're interested. Tell Us About Your Portfolio »
Domain Porfolios I used to believe that the purpose of the Meta description tag
was
twofold: to help the page rank highly for the words that
were
contained within it, as well as to provide a nice description in
the
search engine results pages (SERPs). However, today it appears
that,
similar to the Meta keywords tag, the information you place in
this
tag is *not* given any weight in the ranking algorithms of
Google, and
only a tiny amount of weight in Yahoo's.
The Meta Description Tag should be written in such a way that it interests the user, thus tempting her to click on the link to your site and visit your web page. The Meta Description Tag needs to be kept brief yet informative. 30 words description should do fine. Keywords and key phrases should be included in the Meta Description Tag, though care should be taken not to repeat them too often. Like the Title Tag, the Meta Description Tag should be different and customized for each page depending on the content theme of each page.
Domains For Sale In other words, whether you use your important keyword phrases
in your
Meta description tag or not, it won't affect the position of your
page
in the SERPs for the words that are important to you. In fact,
you
could easily leave it out altogether. But should you?
Domain Optimizing Well, if you're already happy with the "snippets" of text that
the
search engines post from your page in any given search query,
then
there's no reason to have a Meta description tag on your
pages.
However, it's important to note that the snippet the engines use
will
vary, depending on what the searcher typed into the engine.
Domain Resellers Let's take a step back and look at what the search engines show
in the
SERPs. It can get a little bit confusing, but if you try out your
own
searches in the various engines, you'll have a better idea of what
I'm
talking about. The search engines are constantly changing this
sort of
thing, plus they all behave in slightly different ways, as you'll
see
in my examples.
Namepros At Google, if you search for a site by URL like this:
www.highrankings.com, the snippet you see is the first instance
of
text on the page. Interestingly enough, on my
home page, an image alt
attribute tag is the first instance of words "on the page," and
that's
what shows up as part of my "snippet" for this particular
search.
(The image is a clickable image, so this jibes with my other
theory of
Google indexing the words in the alt attributes of clickable
images.
See this forum thread from Dec. 2003.)
Domain Parking For this type of search, Yahoo displays the Meta description
info.
It's important to note that generally the only people searching
using
URLs are site owners trying to see if their pages are
indexed.
Therefore, you shouldn't worry too much about what you see under
those
circumstances.
Cheap Registras So let's try something that a real person might search for
when
looking for what I have to offer -- how about "SEO copy"?
Name Com In Google, my
Nitty-gritty handbook page shows up second in
the
results with the following snippet:
Godaddy "... techniques: Search engine optimization (SEO) consultants
who need
to edit the existing copy of their clients' sites as a matter
of
course. ..."
Parked Com
Not the best of snippets, to say the least.
Domain Porfolios In this case, I don't have the phrase "SEO copy" in my
Meta
description tag, nor is it anywhere on the page as a complete
phrase.
Because of this, Google has simply found instances where the word
SEO
and the word copy were near each other, and used the surrounding
text
as the snippet.
Domains For Sale Now, if I felt that "SEO copy" was a viable keyword phrase that
people
might be searching on, I may want to adjust my page accordingly
so
that the phrase appeared in my Meta description tag as well
as
somewhere in the body text. Again, this is not because it would
help
it to rank highly, but because I would receive a more
suitable
description that was more in tune with what the searcher was
looking
for. One can surmise that they might be more inclined to click on
my
listing in that case.
Domain Optimizing Let's look at Yahoo for the same phrase. They've ranked the page
at
#3, and used the following snippet:
Domain Resellers "Learn SEO copywriting with Jill Whalen's special report --
The
Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines."
Namepros Now that's a good snippet! Well, guess what? That's my
Meta
description tag for that page. Even though the exact phrase wasn't
in
the tag, and neither was the word "copy," Yahoo still chose to
display
it for this search query. I'm guessing this is because that phrase
is
actually nowhere on the page, other than in the Title tag. So
with
Yahoo, having a decent Meta description tag was very worthwhile
in
this instance.
Domain Parking More Tests
Cheap Registras I also recently discovered that when I tested a nonsense word in
the
Meta description tag of a page (with the word not appearing
elsewhere
on the page), Google did not find it. But when I added the word to
the
visible text copy on the page, Google would bring up the test
page
when the nonsense word was searched for. Not only that, but
it
displayed that part of the Meta description tag where the
nonsense
word appeared.
Name Com In Yahoo, my nonsense-word test page was found, even if the
word
appeared only in the Meta description tag and nowhere else on
the
page. Interestingly enough, however, Yahoo didn't display the part
of
the tag where the word was placed. They displayed only the
beginning
of the description, and cut it off after about 45 words. I
purposely
placed my nonsense word deep into my description tag to see if
it
would get
picked up. In this case, the
word appeared as the last of
138 words in the tag. I'll probably add even more words at some
point
to see if there's any cutoff point where Yahoo will stop
indexing.
Godaddy Other Engines
Parked Com I also tested a few searches at Teoma and MSN. Each engine
is
slightly different in how they display the Meta description
tag.
Teoma seems to find the words in the tag, but doesn't
necessarily
display them. When I searched for a unique sampling of text from
one
of my tags, Teoma found the page, but chose to display the
first
sentence on the page instead. Not surprisingly, the current
MSN
search worked the same as Yahoo. However, MSN's search
technology
preview (which is the new engine
they're working on) behaved similarly to Google on all tests
regarding
Meta descriptions.
Domain Porfolios My new recommendation for this tag is not to worry too much
about it.
If you have some great call-to-action statements utilizing
your
keyword phrases on your Web pages, they will probably show up in
your
snippets at the engines. But since it's easy enough to create
a
compelling sentence or 2 that incorporates your main keyword
phrases,
you might as well do this for your Meta descriptions.
Domains For Sale Certainly, the more control you have over your listing in the
SERPs,
the more clickthroughs you should see. If your Meta description
tags
can help with that, then it's certainly worth the time to
create
compelling, keyword-rich ones.
Domain Optimizing
======================================================================
Jill Whalen of High Rankings is an internationally recognized
search engine optimizationconsultant and editor of the free
weekly High Rankings Advisor
search engine marketing newsletter
Domain Resellers She specializes in search engine optimization, SEO consultations
and seminars. Jill's handbook,
"The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines" teaches
business owners how and where to
place relevant keyword phrases on their Web sites so that they
make sense to users and gain high rankings in the major search
engines.
===============================================================
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