Creative Connections

Key Facts – Quick Reference

• Your description tags should be no more than 156 characters long including spaces
• Keywords should not be repeated more than twice in a description tag
• Description tags should accurately summarise the page content to both search engines and visitors
• Use words and phrases that you think a user would type when searching to find a product or page
• Every web page on your site should ideally have a unique description tag
• Do not just fill the description tag with keywords

Description Tag Overview

As with the title meta tag the description tag plays a very important part in search engine optimization and it also has two main equally important functions:

Description tags give search engines and users a summary of what a page is about. They should be a short paragraph of one or two sentences that as accurately as possible give a summary of the content of the page. They should be a maximum of 156 characters long, as this is all that search engines (well Google anyway) will look at, so any text over the 156th character will not be used for SEO purposes by Google. The text of your description tag should include your keywords, but not just be keywords. It is best not to use any one keyword more than twice. The description tag should expand on the content of your title tag.

The second function of the description tag is to provide the text known as the snippet that is shown below the search result for your page. This is your chance to grab users attention and make them decide to click through to your site, so a well crafted, interesting and attention grabbing snippet will give your page a much better chance of being viewed.

The snippet is the text in black below the the main link

If you do not provide your own description tag, Google may choose a relevant section from the actual content of your page or if you have an entry on the Open Directory Project they make take the description from there. The important thing to remember is that for Google it is all about the accuracy and relevancy of the search result, so they will display what they believe to be the best match to the users search term. But in the main – if your description tag accurately summarises your page content, and fits nicely with the content of your page title tag, it will be displayed.

For further reading on the description tag take a look at the Google Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide. It really is worth taking the time to understand how to make the best use of your web site page title tags.

Look out for my next blog “The Search Engine Optimisation Journey: Stage 5 - Content is King!!