Meta Description Tag - Free Google Advertising?

Posted on January 4, 2008
Filed Under Search Engine Optimization |

Meta Description TagAre you using a Meta Description Tag? Are you making the most of your position in the Search Engine Results from Google? You may have done all the hard work to get your blog ranked on the first page of results on Google, but if you aren’t using a meta description tag in your posts, you may well be missing out on valuable visitors from Google.

Let’s face it - Google is the main game when it comes to building traffic to your website. Being dugg or stumbled upon can bring a heap of traffic in a short period, but a lot of it’s not well targeted. Google on the other hand, will deliver a constant stream of visitors to your website - all of them looking for what you have to offer. This is very important if you are trying to make money blogging. You want visitors interested in what you’re selling.

What’s A Meta Description Tag?

A meta description tag is an HTML element used to provide information about a web page in addition to what gets rendered by a browser (technically the description is an attribute of the meta element, but lets not split hairs). It’s significance in search engine optimization is not related to how well you rank, but rather what gets displayed in the search results page once you are well ranked.

Along with the title, this is what people will see in the search results. They will make up their mind whether to follow the link to your site based on what appears here. Google has stated it would rather show the meta description in the results. So don’t stuff the description full of keywords at the expense of readability.

The format of the meta description tag is as follows:

<meta name=”description” content=”This should be a really compelling description which will entice searchers into visiting your blog.” />

The tag should appear in your web pages html code somewhere between the <head> and </head> tags.

Meta Description Tags In Wordpress:

The easiest way of adding meta description tags to a Wordpress blog is by using the All In One SEO Pack Wordpress Plugin. Among other things, this plugin lets you enter a description for each post you write, each page you publish and a separate meta description for your home page.

Can You Do It On A Blogger Blog?

You can certainly add the meta description tag code listed above to your Blogger blog. You can do this by editing the html code for your template and inserting the tag somewhere after the <head> tag but before the </head> tag.

While this is may be better than having no description at all, especially for your front page, it has the disadvantage of displaying the same description on every blog page. If your home page is the one that gets ranked well in Google and is where you would expect to get most of your traffic, this may be fine. But if you have optimized other posts to rank well, you may undo some of this good work by letting Google display your more generic home page meta description. In this case, you may be better off letting Google choose a snippet from within the post itself to show in the search results.

How Many Clicks Are You Missing?

There is a facility in Google WebMaster Tools which I described in my last post - Are You Making The Most Of Google’s Search Statistics. Using the Top Google Searches reports you can get an idea of how many potential clicks you are missing out on. You will then be able to measure the impact of any changes you make over time.

Regardless of whether you like Google and agree with their practices, you need to learn to harness their power. Their dominance of the search market means you ignore them at your peril.

Technorati Tags: Blogging Tips, SEO, webmaster tools




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Comments

2 Responses to “Meta Description Tag - Free Google Advertising?”

  1. marhgil on January 4th, 2008 10:35 am

    here’s the way to do it on Blogspot using the Classic template. But on this workaround, you put the blog post title on the description meta tag followed by the blog’s description. It’s better than having the same description meta tags all over your blog.

  2. TributeK on January 5th, 2008 11:44 am

    I’m gonna put these meta tags to work today. Nice post here.

    Great comment too marhgil, that’s a really good option for blogger, now I just gotta figure out if it’s possible in wordpress. I sure it must be.

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