What Are The Functions Of Meta Description Tags In SEO
Meta description tags are also important for every page on your web site. In some search engine results, the text beneath the linked title (shown in Figure 6-3) comes directly from the information included in the meta description tag.
Despite the fact that not all search engines use the description included in the meta description tags, all of them do read the description tag. They also use the description included there as one of the factors considered during the ranking process.
The catch with meta description tags is that they work differently for different search engines. For example, Google gives very little weight to meta descriptions. Instead, the Google search engine looks at the text on a page. And on the SERPS, Google doesn’t display the meta description text either. What does show is the content surrounding the instance of the keyword on your site. Google calls this a snippet.
The Yahoo! search engine, however, does put weight on meta description text, and it uses that text directly under the web site link on SERPs.
So, what does this all mean? First, it means that your meta description tag isn’t the most important piece of coding your web page. However, it also means that you don’t want to skip over the meta description tag, because some search engines actually do use it.
So you should include the meta description tag on each page of your web site using the following guidelines:
■Different search engines allow different description text lengths. A good rule of thumb is to keep your descriptions to around 200-250 characters. That’s about enough space for one to two descriptive sentences..
■Every page in your web site should include its own, unique meta description tag.
■Meta description tags should include keywords with high levels of importance or effectiveness.
■Meta description text should not be the same as the text included in the title tag.
Like the title tag, the meta description tag belongs inside the <Head> </Head> section of your web pages. Ordinarily, web-site designers include the meta description tag after the title tag and before the meta keywords tag, but that’s not set in stone. As long as the meta description tag appears between the opening and closing head tags, it will be read by crawlers as it should be.
When creating your meta description tag, this is what it should look like:
<META name=”description” content=”Your description goes here.”>
For example, the meta description tag that I might use for my personal web site would look like this:
<META name=”description” content=”Technology for consumers.”>
It’s important to note that not everyone agrees on the value of the meta description tag. However, it takes very little time to include this tag (or any of the tags included in this section of the book) in your web-site coding; therefore, including it should be a given. As with many different strategies in SEO, these tags are not a sure thing, and they are not the absolute solution to ensuring that your site ranks well. But they are one more element that could affect your ranking, so including them should be automatic.
