TweetOptimizing web page meta description tags won’t increase your rankings in the search engines but it will increase your web traffic.
What Is A Web Page Meta-Description Tag?
The search engines will often use the meta description to display under the title tag in the search results.
Red box is surrounding the meta-description of this web page.
Well-written meta description tags will increase the click-through rate of your search results. In other words, the better your meta-description “sells” your page to a searcher, the more clicks you will get.
Where Can I Find My Meta Description Tag?
You will find your meta description tag in the code of your website — follow these steps.
- Navigate to a page on your website
- Press Ctrl + U in Firefox to view the source code
- At the beginning of your source code you should find something that looks like this:
If you don’t find this piece of code on your web page, it means that you don’t have a meta description tag for that page.
How To Add or Edit Your Meta Description Tags
If you are are using a Content Management System (CMS) you will most likely find that there is a way to easily update your meta description tags. Contact the person that build the website and ask them how to add or edit your meta description tags.
In WordPress, you can install Headspace II, once you do you will see a place to edit meta descriptions on every page.
Here are some Meta Description Optimization Tips:
- Use the keywords targeted to that page in the meta description
- Ensure that the meta description reads well
- “Sell” the searcher on clicking on the page
- Keep the meta description shorter than 160 characters
What are your questions about optimizing web page meta description tags? What advice do you have?
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice post. An informative Meta Description Tag can provide a short but direct description about the page they are about to visit. It’s also your one chance to engage with the visitor by telling them why they should visit one of your pages.
Absolutamondo Mr. Ivan! Thanks for stopping by!
Great stuff Russ. It always amazes me how many web designers don’t use this tag, but they’re quick to put up the Meta Keywords tag (useless). Business owners should see nice increases in traffic by doing this one thing.
@Saint Louis SEO — Yup, it’s a simple fix — if your on the right platform — it’s not so simple if you have a custom coded site