The quality of your snippet — the short text preview we display for each web result — can have a direct impact on the chances of your site being clicked (i.e. the amount of traffic Google sends your way). We use a number of strategies for selecting snippets, and you can control one of them by writing an informative meta description for each URL.
Why does Google care about meta descriptions?
We want snippets to accurately represent the web result. We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL's content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics. Keep in mind that meta descriptions comprised of long strings of keywords don't achieve this goal and are less likely to be displayed in place of a regular, non-meta description, snippet. And it's worth noting that while accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won't affect your ranking within search results.
Snippet showing quality meta description
Snippet showing lower-quality meta description
What are some good meta description strategies?
Differentiate the descriptions for different pages
Using identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site isn't very helpful when individual pages appear in the web results. In these cases we're less likely to display the boilerplate text. Create descriptions that accurately describe each specific page. Use site-level descriptions on the main home page or other aggregation pages, and consider using page-level descriptions everywhere else. You should obviously prioritize parts of your site if you don't have time to create a description for every single page; at the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your homepage and popular pages.
Include clearly tagged facts in the description
The meta description doesn't just have to be in sentence format; it's also a great place to include structured data about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise. Similarly, product pages might have the key bits of information -- price, age, manufacturer -- scattered throughout a page, making it unlikely that a snippet will capture all of this information. Meta descriptions can bring all this data together. For example, consider the following meta description for the 7th Harry Potter Book, taken from a major product aggregator.
Not as desirable:
There are a number of reasons this meta description wouldn't work well as a snippet on our search results page:
All of this means that the average person viewing a Google results page -- who might spend under a second scanning any given snippet -- is likely to skip this result. As an alternative, consider the meta description below.
Much nicer:
What's changed? No duplication, more information, and everything is clearly tagged and separated. No real additional work is required to generate something of this quality: the price and length are the only new data, and they are already displayed on the site.
Programmatically generate descriptions
For some sites, like news media sources, generating an accurate and unique description for each page is easy: since each article is hand-written, it takes minimal effort to also add a one-sentence description. For larger database-driven sites, like product aggregators, hand-written descriptions are more difficult. In the latter case, though, programmatic generation of the descriptions can be appropriate and is encouraged -- just make sure that your descriptions are not "spammy." Good descriptions are human-readable and diverse, as we talked about in the first point above. The page-specific data we mentioned in the second point is a good candidate for programmatic generation.
Use quality descriptions
Finally, make sure your descriptions are... descriptive. It's easy to become lax on the quality of the meta descriptions, since they're not directly visible in the UI for your site's visitors. But meta descriptions might be displayed in Google search results -- if the description is high enough quality. A little extra work on your meta descriptions can go a long way towards showing a relevant snippet in search results. That's likely to improve the quality and quantity of your user traffic.
The Google Webmaster Central Blog described what makes for a good meta description versus what makes for a bad meta description. Meta descriptions are a special tag that you place within the source code of your html page. They can be used by search engines for ranking purposes as well as for being displayed within the search result pages.
The tag looks like this when you view the source code:
Many people think meta tags are the magic solution to ranking well. Create the perfect combination with the perfect keyword density and presto! Well, that is far from being true - there is more to SEO than good meta tags and there are also many off-page factors. However, it does help to have highly optimized Meta tags.
How to write meta tags correctly:
Always use your keyword(s) in the title and aim for a keyword density of 20-35%. Example: Your keyword is "widgets". Your title could be: "Buy widgets at ABC Widgets Company" and since we used widgets twice within 6 words the density is 33%. This may not always be possible if you are targeting more than one keyword.
The important thing is to make certain your title is highly descriptive of your page but try not to dilute the effectiveness of your keyword by adding too many other words.
Don't use just the Company Name. Think "keywords" when writing the title. Try to put your keywords as close to the beginning as possible.
Use at least one of your keywords near the beginning of the description.
Using 12 to 24 words total (and not exceeding the character limit) seems to be a good range for most search engines.
Put the most important words at the beginning of the tag.
If you don't use your keywords within the viewable text of the page, then just adding them to the meta keywords tag is very unlikely to help with rankings for those keywords. However, some use the meta keyword tag as a place to put alternatives or misspellings of their keywords even though they are not on the viewable text. It is not clear whether this helps or not, but it won’t hurt.
Don't use this tag to “stuff” or repeat keywords. This doesn't help and could hurt with some search engines.
The optimal number of keywords should be between 7 and 48 words.
If you use robots.txt file to block search engine spiders, you do not need to use the meta robots tag.
If you want the search engines to index your site, you really don't need to use the tag.
Always place it in the head of the document.
Translation:
Index this page and follow all the links to other pages.
DO NOT Index this page but follow all the links to other pages.
Index this page but DO NOT follow the links to other pages.
DO NOT Index this page AND DO NOT follow all the links to other pages.
Note: Never put more than one meta robot tag on the page or more than one directive in the content area of the tag. Use the tools provided by InstantPosition.com to create your robots meta tag with index and follow already properly placed.
The Meta Description: Is somewhat important and has some support
The Meta Keyword Tag: Is of low importance and has limited support
The Meta Robots Tag: Is only important if you don't want pages indexed
Other Meta Tags: Are not very important in search engine ranking
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="informative description here">
Why does Google care about meta descriptions?
We want snippets to accurately represent the web result. We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL's content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics. Keep in mind that meta descriptions comprised of long strings of keywords don't achieve this goal and are less likely to be displayed in place of a regular, non-meta description, snippet. And it's worth noting that while accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won't affect your ranking within search results.
Snippet showing quality meta description
Snippet showing lower-quality meta description
What are some good meta description strategies?
Differentiate the descriptions for different pages
Using identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site isn't very helpful when individual pages appear in the web results. In these cases we're less likely to display the boilerplate text. Create descriptions that accurately describe each specific page. Use site-level descriptions on the main home page or other aggregation pages, and consider using page-level descriptions everywhere else. You should obviously prioritize parts of your site if you don't have time to create a description for every single page; at the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your homepage and popular pages.
Include clearly tagged facts in the description
The meta description doesn't just have to be in sentence format; it's also a great place to include structured data about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise. Similarly, product pages might have the key bits of information -- price, age, manufacturer -- scattered throughout a page, making it unlikely that a snippet will capture all of this information. Meta descriptions can bring all this data together. For example, consider the following meta description for the 7th Harry Potter Book, taken from a major product aggregator.
Not as desirable:
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="[domain name redacted]
: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7): Books: J. K. Rowling,Mary GrandPré by J. K. Rowling,Mary GrandPré">
: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7): Books: J. K. Rowling,Mary GrandPré by J. K. Rowling,Mary GrandPré">
There are a number of reasons this meta description wouldn't work well as a snippet on our search results page:
- The title of the book is complete duplication of information already in the page title.
- Information within the description itself is duplicated (J. K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré are each listed twice).
- None of the information in the description is clearly identified; who is Mary GrandPré?
- The missing spacing and overuse of colons makes the description hard to read.
All of this means that the average person viewing a Google results page -- who might spend under a second scanning any given snippet -- is likely to skip this result. As an alternative, consider the meta description below.
Much nicer:
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Author: J. K. Rowling, Illustrator: Mary GrandPré, Category: Books, Price: $17.99, Length: 784 pages">
What's changed? No duplication, more information, and everything is clearly tagged and separated. No real additional work is required to generate something of this quality: the price and length are the only new data, and they are already displayed on the site.
Programmatically generate descriptions
For some sites, like news media sources, generating an accurate and unique description for each page is easy: since each article is hand-written, it takes minimal effort to also add a one-sentence description. For larger database-driven sites, like product aggregators, hand-written descriptions are more difficult. In the latter case, though, programmatic generation of the descriptions can be appropriate and is encouraged -- just make sure that your descriptions are not "spammy." Good descriptions are human-readable and diverse, as we talked about in the first point above. The page-specific data we mentioned in the second point is a good candidate for programmatic generation.
Use quality descriptions
Finally, make sure your descriptions are... descriptive. It's easy to become lax on the quality of the meta descriptions, since they're not directly visible in the UI for your site's visitors. But meta descriptions might be displayed in Google search results -- if the description is high enough quality. A little extra work on your meta descriptions can go a long way towards showing a relevant snippet in search results. That's likely to improve the quality and quantity of your user traffic.
The Google Webmaster Central Blog described what makes for a good meta description versus what makes for a bad meta description. Meta descriptions are a special tag that you place within the source code of your html page. They can be used by search engines for ranking purposes as well as for being displayed within the search result pages.
The tag looks like this when you view the source code:
<META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”informative description here”>The Google blog post describes key attributes of what Google considers making a good meta description, factors its says may increase the odds that your meta description tag will get used. They include:
- Unique meta descriptions on each page of your site
- Show facts about the content on the page that are not represented in the title
- Make the description easy to read
- Dynamic sites can dynamically generate descriptive meta descriptions easily
- Make sure your descriptions are quality and represent the content on the page
Many people think meta tags are the magic solution to ranking well. Create the perfect combination with the perfect keyword density and presto! Well, that is far from being true - there is more to SEO than good meta tags and there are also many off-page factors. However, it does help to have highly optimized Meta tags.
What are Meta Tags?
Meta tags are parts of an HTML document that are used for you to describe the page content for search engines. Meta tags are placed within the head area of an HTML file and with the exception of the Title tag; your visitors do not see them as part of the viewable area of the page.How to write meta tags correctly:
Why are Meta Tags important?
The primary reason they are considered important in search engine positioning is that you have some ability to direct how your pages are described, categorized and indexed by various search engines. Don't be misled; creating the perfect Meta tags does not mean you will zoom to the top of the pack; many search engines do not assign much value to the majority of Meta tags.Which search engines support Meta Tags?
Crawler-based search engines have the ability to utilize the meta tags; however, not all of them do so. Most will support one tag or the other but rarely does a search engine support them all. Crawler based search engines include: Google™, Teoma, Alta Vista, Inktomi, AllTheWeb and others. Directory based search properties like Yahoo Directory and Open Directory do not spider your pages; they rely on the description you supply to them when you submit your page.How to write a good title tag
The title tag is not really a meta tag; however it does appear in the head area of your page along with the various meta tags and it is the most valuable tool to describe your page to the search engines. It is an extraordinarily important factor in how search engines rank and list your web site.What search engines use the Title tag?
Just about all major search engines use the title tag in some way and many use it to compose their listing. When creating the title for each page you want to include your primary search terms or keywords and create a concise description of the page in general. The title tag is also used as the text to describe your page when someone adds it to his or her favorites list and it displays in the title bar of their browser, so, it is important to make it clear and descriptive. Guidelines to writing a good title:
Create a title that is between 4 and 12 words. Remember, this is a guideline and not a rule. Each search engine has different maximum values for the title area. In any case, try not to exceed 63 characters because sometimes your title will be truncated.Always use your keyword(s) in the title and aim for a keyword density of 20-35%. Example: Your keyword is "widgets". Your title could be: "Buy widgets at ABC Widgets Company" and since we used widgets twice within 6 words the density is 33%. This may not always be possible if you are targeting more than one keyword.
The important thing is to make certain your title is highly descriptive of your page but try not to dilute the effectiveness of your keyword by adding too many other words.
Don't use just the Company Name. Think "keywords" when writing the title. Try to put your keywords as close to the beginning as possible.
The Meta Description Tag
The Meta description tag allows you to write a short description of the page, however, it is not fully supported by search engines.What search engines use the Meta Description?
Of the major search engines: AltaVista, AllTheWeb and Teoma make most use of the tag. Google™ automatically creates its own description from content snipets. Others may support it partially. Directories (like Yahoo Directory) are not search engines and they rely on the description you supply when you submit.Guidelines to writing a good Meta Description:
Limit the total description to approximately 200 to 250 characters. Although some search engines may support more when indexing the page, they may only display a smaller quantity of characters.Use at least one of your keywords near the beginning of the description.
Using 12 to 24 words total (and not exceeding the character limit) seems to be a good range for most search engines.
Meta Tags (Continued)
The Meta Keyword Tag
The meta keyword tag allows you to list the keywords for the page; however, most search engines do not support this tag.What search engines use the Meta Keywords Tag?
Of the major search engines: Inktomi and Teoma are the few that even take this tag into consideration.Guidelines to writing a good Meta Keyword tag:
List the primary keywords that pertain to this page.Put the most important words at the beginning of the tag.
If you don't use your keywords within the viewable text of the page, then just adding them to the meta keywords tag is very unlikely to help with rankings for those keywords. However, some use the meta keyword tag as a place to put alternatives or misspellings of their keywords even though they are not on the viewable text. It is not clear whether this helps or not, but it won’t hurt.
Don't use this tag to “stuff” or repeat keywords. This doesn't help and could hurt with some search engines.
The optimal number of keywords should be between 7 and 48 words.
The Meta Robots Tag
The meta robots tag allows you to control whether or not you want the page to be indexed by search engines. By default, search engine spiders (crawlers) will try to index every page and follow links from one page to the next. The best use of the meta robots tag is when you want to keep the search engine spiders OUT and not let them index a page.Guidelines to writing a Meta Robots tag:
Make certain you double and triple check your code when using this tag. Improperly formatted tags or the wrong usage could keep search engines from indexing your pages or even your entire web site.If you use robots.txt file to block search engine spiders, you do not need to use the meta robots tag.
If you want the search engines to index your site, you really don't need to use the tag.
Always place it in the head of the document.
Examples of proper formatting:
Translation:Index this page and follow all the links to other pages.
DO NOT Index this page but follow all the links to other pages.
Index this page but DO NOT follow the links to other pages.
DO NOT Index this page AND DO NOT follow all the links to other pages.
Note: Never put more than one meta robot tag on the page or more than one directive in the content area of the tag. Use the tools provided by InstantPosition.com to create your robots meta tag with index and follow already properly placed.
Other Meta Tags
There are many other meta tags besides the ones we've discussed, however, none of them will improve your search engine ranking. Some are for internal search methods and some (such as the revisit tag) have no effect with search engines. In fact, meta tags like the "refresh" tag have been used to "trick" search engine spiders and are now regarded as something that could hurt your ranking with some search engines.Summary: What Meta tags are important?
The Title Tag: Is very important and has full supportThe Meta Description: Is somewhat important and has some support
The Meta Keyword Tag: Is of low importance and has limited support
The Meta Robots Tag: Is only important if you don't want pages indexed
Other Meta Tags: Are not very important in search engine ranking
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