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What is a Meta Description?
The Meta description is an HTML tag, that is placed inside the head section of an HTML document. You will also find things like the page title in here. The tag will look like this;
<meta name="description" content="your description here">
The description is what appears in search engine results pages (SERPS). It is sometimes incorrectly through that major search engines use the META tags for ranking purposes, but this is not true - it can however boost the number of visitors if you take take to write a good sales pitch. The description is displayed as the part of text that is shown after a search has been done, underneath the site title; If you word it correctly, you will draw interested visitors to your site, so it is important to take a moment and write a good META description.
Meta Description Length
It is usually thought that the Meta description length should be between 175 to 250 characters, but this can vary on different search engines. Google, as the main choice of search engine, only seems to index around 150 characters of what you write; anything above this gets truncated and replaced when "..." instead. If can cut your sales pitch off midflow if you are not careful so you should try to keep it around 150 characters.
How to write a Meta Description
It can be very hard to write a decent page description, and doing it in limited space is even harder. However, it is worth taking time to do this as results are noticeable. You may even want to modify what you have written until you can notice an improvements on your hits from search engines.
You should always bear in mind what a user will be thinking when searching for your chosen keywords; You want to atttact them to click on your link, and not one of your competitors. Consider what would make YOU click on a link - if you cant picture this
then bear it in mind next time you search for something and pay attention to what draws your attention to a particular site.
You should mention two of your main keywords within the description as these will be bolded on some search engines such as Google, giving your description further emphasis. When creating your description try and also mention what services, products or information is available on your webpage.
An example of a good Meta description
Note: The following keywords are a poor example as they are not targetted enough; there will be a lot of competition for these words but i have chosen them for this example anyway;
Target Keywords: golf clubs, golf equipment
Description: Improve your golf handicap with our selection of quality golf clubs and gold equipment. We provide golf clubs at very competitive prices.
Why this is a good example;
* The length is 150 characters long, which is ideal (see above) and google will not cut off the length
* The user can see that the site has golf clubs and equipment and it will improve their game.
* I mentioned that the prices are very competitive so the user may be curious as to what exactly is on offer.
It is important to make sure you do NOT just list your keywords. This is a waste of space and you are not information anyone of the actual page content.
<meta name="description" content="your description here">
The description is what appears in search engine results pages (SERPS). It is sometimes incorrectly through that major search engines use the META tags for ranking purposes, but this is not true - it can however boost the number of visitors if you take take to write a good sales pitch. The description is displayed as the part of text that is shown after a search has been done, underneath the site title; If you word it correctly, you will draw interested visitors to your site, so it is important to take a moment and write a good META description.
Meta Description Length
It is usually thought that the Meta description length should be between 175 to 250 characters, but this can vary on different search engines. Google, as the main choice of search engine, only seems to index around 150 characters of what you write; anything above this gets truncated and replaced when "..." instead. If can cut your sales pitch off midflow if you are not careful so you should try to keep it around 150 characters.
How to write a Meta Description
It can be very hard to write a decent page description, and doing it in limited space is even harder. However, it is worth taking time to do this as results are noticeable. You may even want to modify what you have written until you can notice an improvements on your hits from search engines.
You should always bear in mind what a user will be thinking when searching for your chosen keywords; You want to atttact them to click on your link, and not one of your competitors. Consider what would make YOU click on a link - if you cant picture this
then bear it in mind next time you search for something and pay attention to what draws your attention to a particular site.
You should mention two of your main keywords within the description as these will be bolded on some search engines such as Google, giving your description further emphasis. When creating your description try and also mention what services, products or information is available on your webpage.
An example of a good Meta description
Note: The following keywords are a poor example as they are not targetted enough; there will be a lot of competition for these words but i have chosen them for this example anyway;
Target Keywords: golf clubs, golf equipment
Description: Improve your golf handicap with our selection of quality golf clubs and gold equipment. We provide golf clubs at very competitive prices.
Why this is a good example;
* The length is 150 characters long, which is ideal (see above) and google will not cut off the length
* The user can see that the site has golf clubs and equipment and it will improve their game.
* I mentioned that the prices are very competitive so the user may be curious as to what exactly is on offer.
It is important to make sure you do NOT just list your keywords. This is a waste of space and you are not information anyone of the actual page content.
