The Meta Description Tag Is Important
May 4th, 2009 by Darrin Widick
In a previous post, we discussed the meta keyword tag. This time, we’ll tackle the meta description tag.
The meta description tag is a 200-character (perhaps 25-30 words or so, don’t obsess) explanation of what your site or a particular page is about, It’s your elevator speech. You don’t have much time or space, so be clear and concise. For the home page, tell what you do and where. For interior pages, tell one or two most important ideas covered on that page or section of your site.
Here’s where the description tag is most important: If your tag includes the term a searcher types into Google, all or part of your meta description will be shown as the snippet on the Google serp (search engine results page). Usually, the engines utilize a few words on either side of the term where it appears on the page, and the result may result in a meaningful sentence. Oftentimes, it doesn’t. so if you include the most important keyword phrases for the page in your tag, you can control the snippet. Who doesn’t want that?
Here’s an example: The meta description for this site’s home page is:
<meta name=”description” content=”Dobies Healthcare Group, a health care marketing agency in Kansas City, has provided expert advice and marketing communications and advertising services to the healthcare industry for 17 years.” />
As the nearby screen capture shows, a search on Google for, “health care marketing agency in Kansas City” returns a Google maps listing for Dobies Healthcare Group, and then the standard listings. In the No. 1 position is Dobies.com, with the snippet being:
“Dobies Healthcare Group, a health care marketing agency in Kansas City, has provided expert advice and marketing communications and advertising services to …”
… which is a slightly truncated version of our exact meta description … with the keywords in bold. By placing the keywords for which we want to be ranked directly in our meta description, we’ve achieved a better snippet for our services than Google would have done for us.
Our next post will cover the all-important title tag.
