 | | The
Meta Description Tag:
And How To Use It For A
Higher Click Through Rate
This
page tells how to write a
Meta Description Tag that compels surfers to
click to your site, and that's optimized for the search engines. It
also tells
how to put the description in your web page.
The
meta description tag is a short description of your web page that you
write, and it does two things.
First, it serves as
an advertisement for
your web page. Some search engines use it as the description on the
search results page. Even Google will use it under some circumstances.
Your potential visitors will judge from your title and meta
description whether to visit your
website or one of your competitors.
Second,
it helps search engines find out what your page is about, along with
the title, headlines, body text etc.
The meta
description tag doesn't affect the ranking search engines give your
page,
but it does affect how many people click through from the search engine
results page to your web page.
If you don't have a
meta description, or if the search phrase doesn't relate well to the
meta description, the search engines will use a snippet of text from
your page as their description. The snippet can be ugly, giving
you less clicks through to your web page.
Optimizing
The Meta Description For The Search EnginesThe
search engines use the meta description tag as one of the things that
help them decide what your page is about. Use the main
keyword for the web page once in the description, maximum twice. If you
use it too often, the search engines could consider it to be keyword
stuffing and drop your ranking.
Optimizing
For HumansIt's
funny. There are lots of sites that talk about optimizing the meta
description tag for the search engines, but hardly any talk in any
detail
about optimizing it for surfers. Yet in Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising
campaigns live and die by the quality of the title and description
displayed. Advertisers work hard to improve the click-through
by split testing – comparing two ads to see which gets the highest
click-through rate. They test, analyze and test again until they have
the best ad possible. They
make the money, while advertisers that don't
test fall by the wayside.
It's not so easy to test
meta descriptions, but it's still worthwhile spending time to get a
good description. It takes a lot of work to get to the point of being
in the top 10 or top 30 search engine results. A well crafted title and
description isn't a lot of extra work, and it could give an extra 50%
clicks to your site, or maybe even double them. What would that be
worth to you?
I'll try to fill in the gaps in
optimizing meta descriptions for your ideal visitor.
You
should at this stage have a thumbnail sketch of your ideal visitor. So
think about what they are looking for; what they need. Your
description is to get targeted surfers to click through to your site,
it isn't to sell your product or service.
- Tell
targeted surfers your site has the information they need. Let them know
why they should click to your
site.
- Include
the page keyword in the description. If the keyword that is typed in
for the search is in the title or description, it will be made bold and
make your website stand out more.
- Describe your
page accurately. A
misleading description puts people off, and it won't bring targeted
traffic.
- The title and meta description
work together to make the advertisement for your web page. Don't just
repeat the title for the description.
- You don't
have to
write in complete sentences. If a list of the main points
works better, use that.
- You
have around 150 characters, including spaces, to work with. That's
around 20-25 words. After that your description can be cut short.
- Use
a unique description for
each page.
- Check
other sites in your niche for ideas, but don't copy.
You'll get an idea of what looks good and what doesn't.
- Write
down a few possible descriptions. That way you have the best chance of
getting a good one.
On
your home page you can write a site-wide description. On the level two
pages that are like hubs for different sections of your site, you can
describe
that section. On all other pages write a description for
that page alone.
Test When Time AllowsIt
doesn't matter how well you
think a description will work, the proof is in the visitor numbers.
When your site is more established and you have time, revisit your meta
descriptions and titles. Check your stats, and note down how many
visitors
the page is getting in what period of time.
Try
changing the
description and/or title and check what happens after the search
engines update the results page with your new description/title.
Do
you get more
visitors, or less? Just do a page or two at a time, so that you can get
a feel for what your visitors click on without risking losing too many
visitors at once. Tweaking the title/description won't change your
ranking, but it could make a significant difference in your
click-through rate,
and your income.
When you test, always write down
the title/description you're replacing and the stats, so you can always
go back if the original works better, and so you can compare the
different "ads" and their results.
How To
Put The Meta
Description Tag In Your PageYour
web page editor should have a dialog box that lets you enter the
description, along with the title.
In Nvu, click on
Format in
the menubar at the top of the page, then on Page Title And
Properties.
A dialog box will pop up that lets you enter the title,
author, and description.
To enter the description
directly into the HTML source code use the following code.
<meta
name="description" content="Write Your Description Here">
Put
it in the Head section of the source code after the title. Here's an
example of some HTML source code showing where the title, meta
description tag and meta keywords go.
The part of
the
page your visitors see is the bit in between <body> and
</body> tags.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Write Your
Title Here</title>
<meta name="description"
content="Write your description here">
<meta name="keywords" content="main
keyword, keyword 2"
</head>
<body>
this
is where you write your content
</body>
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