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The Meta Description Tag and Search Engine Optimization
- Question: The other day we learned about meta description tags that were "good" as opposed to meta keyword tags which were almost useless. I was asking my web person to include the meta description tags to optimize our website. He nearly came unglued, virtually telling me it wouldn't do any good in page ranking! What's the deal?
- Susan , Salt Lake City, UT
November 13, 2009
- Answer -
By Jason McDonald, Ph.D.
Meta Tags: Tags and Syntax?
"Meta" tags have received a bad rap, ever since the "Meta Keywords" tag became the enfant terrible of the search marketing community. First of all, we need to understand what's "Meta" about "Meta tags" and what are the primary tags available for search engine optimization purposes. (Then we need to understand their function, on Google, Yahoo, or Bing, if any.) So first of all what are the primary Meta Tags - all of which are required to go inside the <HEAD> tag?
Primary Meta Tags:
- <meta name="keywords" content="put page keywords here">
- <meta name="description" content="put a brief description of the page here">
- <meta name="robots" content="NOODP">
- <meta name="robots" content="NOYDIR">
- <meta name="robots" content="NOFOLLOW">
Translated into English, what these are supposed to do or mean is:
- Keywords = a string of your page's most important keywords, telling the search engine which keywords are important for that page.
- Description = a one-to-two sentence description of the page, telling the search engine how to summarize your page in their search results as well as (possibly) telling the search engine what the page is about.
- Noodp = No Open Directory (dmoz.org), telling the search engine to not use your listing there if it exists.
- Noydir = No Yahoo Directory (dir.yahoo.com), telling the search engine not to use your listing on Yahoo if it exists.
- Nofollow = do not heed my links, telling the search engine not to use the links on my page for PageRank.
So follow the syntax listed above, if and when you decide to use them. One word of advice BE BRIEF - in all cases, Google doesn't follow them for words and words, so just a sentence or two is plenty, and don't stuff the keywords tag with zillions of keywords in any case...
- But do they matter? Do the search engines use the META TAGS?
The Meta Description Tag - the Crown Jewel
OK, so here's the bad news. The <META KEYWORDS> tag has largely been discredited. It was heavily overused by webmasters in the mid-1990s, and all the major search engines realized it was stuffed with junk - long strings of irrelevant keywords that did not accurately describe a page's real content. So, most SEO guru's feel (and I agree) that it is not longer used; it's probably ignored. The only possible exception is if it matches the content of your page. That said, I would recommend:
META KEYWORD TAG - use it on each page, and put four to five accurate keywords in it that reflect your page's true content. It won't hurt you, and it might help you. But probably it will do nothing.
A lot of confusion stems from this, and many webmasters will flippantly say that Google doesn't use any META tags. Well, that's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Don't throw out the META DESCRIPTION tag just because its evil twin skippy, the META KEYWORDS tag has been discredited!
The META DESCRIPTION tag, you see, is an entirely different animal from the META KEYWORD tag. META DESCRIPTION may not help you get to the top of Google, Yahoo, or Bing - that is, its content may be ignored in determining your rank on a keyword search. That said, it undoubtedly has a huge impact on how your page is described in search results. I would argue that more than 90% of the time, Google uses the META DESCRIPTION tag as the one to two sentence description of your page. Why is this important? More later...
Examples of the Meta Description Tag at Work in Search Marketing
But now, let's just verify that this is the case:
- Do a search on Google - any search. Choose your favorite keyword.
- Choose a few of the top ten first results, and click over to each one.
- In Firefox >View > Page Source, or Internet Explorer, go >View >Source.
- Compare the visible descriptions on your Google search page with the META DESCRIPTIONS found through View, Source
- Presto! You've figured out it's purpose - the META DESCRIPTION tag becomes your summary on Google about 90% of the time, especially if the search query keywords appear inside it, and (added bonus!) they are bolded in the search results.
Here's a screen shot of my searches for the keyphrase searched on Google, "Cheap Online Insurance" -
And here's a screen shot of the page source - notice how the two match. Try it yourself, you'll see that the META DESCRIPTION is often (90% or more) the description shown by Google.
The Meta Description - Think like a Mad Man
OK, so we've seen that while the META KEYWORDS tag doesn't matter, the META DESCRIPTION tag clearly matters, at least in terms of how you appear on Google. It's not clear if it determines if you appear on Google (my hunch is it does have some impact, but that's just a hunch). But it definitely strongly influences the how of how you appear in search results.
Why does this matter? Well, if you're a fan of the AMC TV Series Mad Men about advertisers in the 1960s, you'll know the answer. The META DESCRIPTION tag becomes your free advertisement on Google. So, write it fun! Write it snappy! Write it so that potential customers will read your "ad" on Google and get excited about your company, product, and/or service. Bottom line: the META DESCRIPTION tag is your opportunity to control your "Free" ad on Google. So use it! The META DESCRIPTION tag is more than just a "Meta" tag, it's your invitation from Google to write your own description or free ad. If you don't think this matters, then well - I guess you are not in marketing.
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