Meta Description – What’s the use!
By: John Elder posted in SEO
Hello good people!
Yesterday I talked about the Keywords Meta Tag, today I want to talk about a meta tag that’s actually useful….the Description Meta tag.
The Description Meta Tag goes between your HTML document’s <head> and </head> tag and will generally look like this:
<head>
<meta name=”description” content=”This is the description of my web site, isn’t it interesting..why yes, it IS interesting”>
</head>
So what should the description in the tag read? That’s a good question…very smart of you to ask!
Your description should read like a little mini sales letter headline…it should suck a reader in and make them want to see the rest of your site.
Why?
While it’s true that visitors to your site will never SEE your Description Meta Tag (unless they click the “view source” button on their browser), the search engines WILL see the tag.
Most major search engines won’t really use the content they find in your description meta tag to rank or categorize your web site at the search engines….but they WILL use it in their search engine results page (SERP).
What’s a SERP? When you go to a search engine and run a search for something, the search engines return a page with a list of links to sites that relate to whatever you searched for. That page is a SERP. You’ll notice that each link also has a little snippet of writing next to it so that you know what the site is generally about.
THAT little snippet usually comes right out of your Description Meta tag. The search engines don’t always use your description meta tag in the SERP. But if you write a useful meta tag, they usually will use it.
So think back to whatever you know about Copywriting (or buy a good book on the subject and bone up) and use those skills to write a masterful snippet that draws in the reader’s attention and makes them want to click your link instead of the 10 or 15 other links on the SERP.
Generally its a good idea to use your main keyword in when writing a description meta tag. Don’t stuff keywords into the tag, but instead drop your main keyword in once. I like to start mine with that specific web page’s main keyword. After all, if someone goes to Google and types in “How to cook a cat” and my web site is about how to cook a cat, it makes sense that I use the phrase “How to Cook A Cat” in my description meta tag. It connects directly with what the person is looking for.
I generally only make a web page revolve around one set of keywords. That makes writing my description meta tag pretty easy!
Questions? Comment below!
-John Elder
The Marketing Fool!
