Web Page Description – Show & Tell
We already talked briefly about the “keywords” meta-tag and how it isn’t really that useful these days when it comes to the process of search engine optimization. Now, we can take a look at one of the meta-tags that actually is useful – the “description” tag.
Perhaps you haven’t even heard of the description meta-tag before or, if you have, you may not think you’ve seen it, but I’m willing to bet that you have – you just might not realize it!
Every time you perform a search in Google, for example, you should see a page of results, each one with a heading you can click on to visit the site in question.
Underneath the heading is some additional text that gives you a basic idea of what you might see if you visit the page – that’s the description meta-tag in action. So, if we perform a search on “Golden retriever groomer”, it makes sense that we’re going to be more interested in those search results that actually mention dog groomers who groom golden retrievers than those who only groom poodles.
The description of each listed page therefore helps us to make the decision as to which link we’re going to click on. So, it makes good sense to ensure that each page of your web site has a good description meta-tag that’s relevant to the content on the page. This doesn’t have to be too long, but it should be enough to give the reader of the search results a reasonable idea of what your site is going to show them.
Important note: Do make sure that the description is relevant to the content – nothing will frustrate your readers more than tricking them to visit your site only to find it’s about something completely different!
The meta-tags are found in the header section of the web page, and might look something like this:
<HEAD>
<META name=’DESCRIPTION’ content=’Dog grooming by Jane for golden retrievers. Other dogs also groomed. Check out our testimonials.’ />
So, take a journey through the pages on your site and check out your own description meta-tags, and tighten them up to give prospective site visitors the right reasons to visit your site.
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