When conducting a search in the search engines, the first thing you see is the title of the page, beneath the page title is a short description of the website. The description of the website is also known as a Meta Description Tag. Meta Description Tags are optional tags found in the head of a website that tell the search engines what your website is about.
You can make your Meta Description Tag consist of a sentence, or a paragraph. Years ago you could easily get good rankings just stuffing your Meta Description Tag up with keywords. Today the Meta Description Tag is not as valuable as it use to be from an SEO perspective but still provides other great benefits if used correctly. You’ll find value in Meta Description Tags by:
- Not stuffing a Meta Description Tag. Too often I’ll see Meta Description Tags stuffed to the limits with keywords. Remember the Meta keywords tag is made for listing keywords, for maximum benefits use the Meta description to describe what is going on your web page. The better you describe the page the greater chance you have to get the click.
- Be mind full of how you use the Meta Description Tags, each search engine is different and will show a specific amount of characters. When writing a Meta Description Tag its best to stay within the parameters set up by the search engines. You want your full description to be visible not only half.
- Think of the Meta Description Tag as a few sentences of free advertising within the search results. Sites with high click through rates often incorporate a sale, promotion, quote, product description, or call to action in their Meta Description Tag.
Meta Description Tags still do help boost the rankings for keywords used in the Meta Description Tag. Be sure to incorporate the primary and secondary keyword of that page in the Meta Description Tag.
If you’re looking to increase your websites traffic or click through rate, enhancing your Meta Description Tags just might be the solution, so revisit them. If you need assistance feel free to contact a specialist at Active Web Group.
